May 2019 - Dialogue - lists.wedgeblade.net

The Transestablishment Stance
by Carleton Stock 31 May '19

31 May '19

I have been thinking a lot about this lately, especially with The Donald in the White House and Congress in dysfunctional mode. We know how to be the establishment dimension by supporting the status quo and we know how to be the disestablishment dimension by being critical of the establishment. Those of us on the Left do a lot of shouting at screens these days.....anger and frustration with the way things are going in the government. Personally, I have been more engaged in politics since November 2016 than I ever was, sometimes jumping into the mud pit to take on the other side. But what about the third dimension, the trans-establishment, that we talked so much about in the Institute over the past 50 or 60 years?! That was the correct stance we said. But what does it mean to be trans-establishment in the Trump Era when things we love and care about are being dismantled? I didn't worry too much during the Reagan or Bush years though they were conservative Republicans. We knew this too would pass, hopefully after the next election. But during the Trump years I worry about lots of things, not the least of which is the survival of democracy, the survival of life on the planet, White Supremacists in power, human rights for minorities and people of color, women, unconventional life-styles, etc. The list goes on and on but you get my point. Is the trans-establishment stance still viable in these times and if so, what's it mean to live it out as a Movement Network and in individual families and in faith communities and other groups? Any wisdom on this matter would be much appreciated.Carleton StockSt. Louis, MO

8 10

5/30/19, Progressing Spirit, David. Felten, Joshua and “The Longest Day”; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 30 May '19

30 May '19

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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4429079122 #yiv4429079122templateBody .yiv4429079122mcnTextContent, #yiv4429079122 #yiv4429079122templateBody .yiv4429079122mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4429079122 #yiv4429079122templateFooter .yiv4429079122mcnTextContent, #yiv4429079122 #yiv4429079122templateFooter .yiv4429079122mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } Joshua fit the battle of Jericho. | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Joshua and “The Longest Day” | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. David M. Felten May 30, 2019 If people today know anything about the book of Joshua it’s likely to be just one story: “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho.” But Joshua asking God to “stop the sun in the sky” is probably a close second – and has clearly had a more dramatic influence on world history (and not in a good way). Right after the Israelites have crossed the Jordan River and destroyed Jericho, they proceed West and destroy a city called Ai. Seeing the Israelites do what they always did (leveling the city and slaughtering all the people), the neighboring Canaanites took notice. Perceiving themselves to be next on the menu, the residents of Gibeon hatched a clever plan. They went to the Israelites and lied. They fawned over Joshua and said, “You are SO amazing and we are SO impressed with you! We’ve travelled from a distant land to make a security pact with you. If you’re in trouble, we’ll help you. If we’re in trouble, you help us. Deal?” Not knowing that Gibeon was just over the next hill, Joshua agrees. As a result, the kings of five of Gibeon’s neighboring cities are not happy. Declaring the Gibeonites traitors, retribution is planned. The Gibeonites are surrounded and send word to Joshua: “We need help!” Joshua thinks, “What? Already?” and then realizes he’s been tricked. But a deal’s a deal, so he and his army march all night to attack before dawn. Facing the combined forces of the five kings from NATO (the North Amorite Treaty Organization) God tells Joshua not to worry and proceeds to “discomfort" the Amorites, throwing down giant hailstones that kill more Amorites than the Israelite army. Then, in one of the more impressive Biblical show-stoppers, God acts on Joshua’s request to “stop the sun” so that Joshua could get even MORE killing done. You probably remember it from the title in your Children’s Bible: “Joshua and the Longest Day.” But is that title correct? Here are some things to keep in mind as you read the story: - According to other Bible stories, it seems the Israelites preferred to fight at night. Darkness promotes confusion and keeps the enemy off-guard. - Note that the Israelites marched all night to attack before dawn (while it was still dark). - To escape, the Amorites ran to the West towards the Aijalon Valley. - Read Joshua’s request carefully: “Sun stand still over Gibeon and Moon stand still over Aijalon.” So, when Joshua makes his request of God, it’s first thing in the morning. The sun is in the East over Gibeon. Why would Joshua need to ask for more daylight when the day’s just beginning? Because he’s not asking for more daylight. He’s asking for more darkness. Then consider that “the Lord threw down huge stones from heaven on [the Amorites] … and they died; there were more who died because of the hailstones than the Israelites killed with the sword.” What kind of storm is big enough to hurl hailstones that kill more soldiers than the Israelites? One big enough to blot out the sun and create the darkness Joshua requested. The plot thickens when you look closely at the Hebrew. The Hebrew word translated as "stand still" does not, in fact, mean “stand still.” It literally means “to be silent, grow dumb” (see Strong’s Concordance #1826). In other words, Joshua is asking the sun to be “quieted” – to stop doing what the sun does, which is give light. The “loss in translation” gets even more maddening when you find out that the Hebrew word translated as "go down" (as in “the sun didn’t go down”) is “bo,” as in “come in,” “enter,” or “to be introduced” (see See Strong’s Concordance #935) – exactly the opposite of “go down” as the King James Version translates it. So, a story that has long been referred to in print and represented in art as “the longest day” should actually be “the shortest day,” the darkness of the previous night having been extended into what should have been daylight. Why does any of this matter? Primarily because it’s just one more example of how the inertia of tradition and the paranoia of theological gatekeepers has crippled the reputation of the Bible in the minds of modern people. If this story ever crosses the mind of non-church-going people (never mind if it’s the “longest” or “shortest” day), it is undoubtedly ignored as just another fairy story that justifies their having dismissed the relevance of the Bible long ago. And it does come up: Scientific Progress Goes “Boink” Perhaps the most infamous use of Joshua 10 was when it was cited by the Inquisition to condemn Galileo in 1633. Regardless of evidence to the contrary, the Church was dead-set on defending the Bible’s demonstrably inaccurate worldview that the sun revolved around the earth. Church leaders used Joshua’s “longest day” story as a proof text to condemn Galileo as a heretic. Even now, there’s an urban legend going around the internet called “The Lost Day,” a man claims that he was present when computers were calculating satellite orbits and, low-and-behold, a missing day was discovered! “Ha! Those godless NASA scientists inadvertently ‘proved’ the Joshua story to be true. Computers don’t lie, y’know!” But the purveyors of this story lie. They lie online, in articles, in sermons, in conferences and it’s even appeared in a “classic” how-to book on how to be a good Christian. NASA has even put out press releases to try and put the kibosh on the story, but that only fires up the conspiracy theorists: “See! They’re hiding something!” Never mind the evidence-based implications of what it would mean for the sun to appear to “stop” in the sky. The Earth, presently rotating at a speed of about 1100 miles per hour, would have to suddenly stop rotating. If that happened, inertia would cause everything on the surface, including the atmosphere, to still be in motion. Anything not anchored to bedrock: forests, cities, oceans, people, animals – everything – would suddenly hurtle away at 1100 mph. Now THAT should be in a movie! Even the Times of Israel panders to Biblical literalists with a 2017 headline that read: “‘Joshua stopped the sun’ 3,224 years ago today, scientists say” -- yet another opportunity for thinking people to roll their eyes in amusement. “But God can do anything” Another argument people make to defend the literal historicity of Joshua 10 is that “God can do anything.” If that’s really true, then God is a heartless and immoral ogre. Just a couple of words to think about: Holocaust. Cancer. Tsunami. Anyone who defends a God who selectively interferes with the laws of nature, manipulates such things as the law of gravity, and the orbit of the heavenly bodies in the sky – all to facilitate more nationalistic murder and mayhem – but stands idly by in the face of contemporary global crises, has got some pretty scary ethical and theological problems. So why is this story even in the Bible? If you’re familiar with the diaries of Julius Caesar, you probably know that Caesar “padded” the story to play better in Rome. As with Caesar’s diaries, Joshua 10 is “padded” military history and nationalistic propaganda created to glorify the heroes of old. Some scholars think it might be a mash-up of stories from a variety of sources, each reflecting distant memories of dramatic events: maybe a Connecticut Yankee-style well-timed eclipse, or the providential timing of a massive thunderstorm that coincided with a significant battle of some kind. In short, it’s a mythic folk tale chock-full of propaganda and outdated cosmologies. But as long as the reader is aware that they’re dealing with tribal, mythic, and pre-scientific world views, the story provides a glimpse into the cultural and political reality of the authors. It’s only when these stories’ very human origins are not taken into consideration that their prejudiced and antiquated ideas compromise humanity’s progress and paint the divine into an indefensible corner. Does it make sense to refer to this story as the “longest day”? Nope. Did Joshua ask for more daylight? Nope. Bad translations and unscrupulous theological operatives have completely misrepresented this tale for their own purposes. Why does it even matter? Because scientific progress has been undermined and reputations ruined over its misuse. In 1992, the Vatican finally issued a public decree announcing that the Catholic Church now believed that Galileo had been right. The earth actually does revolve around the sun. Then in 2000, 367 years after condemning him, the church issued a formal apology to Galileo. But Joshua 10? It’s still out there being misused as “proof” that “God can do anything”, and the Bible is literally and historically accurate (for example, apologists go to extraordinary lengths HERE, HERE, and HERE). Back in the 1920’s Harry Emerson Fosdick warned, “If we don’t allow young people to use their brains, we’re going to lose a whole generation.” And since then, the church has indeed “lost” multiple generations. Going forward, we don’t have to just allow people to use their brains, we have to show them how to use their brains – especially when it comes to the Bible. It’s precisely stories like Joshua’s “longest day” that can be used to deprogram people and rehabilitate the Bible for its cultural and sociological value – along with acknowledging (and offering profuse apologies for) how the Bible has been misused over the centuries. In the end, Joshua 10 is one of those stories that has been almost hopelessly misinterpreted over the millennia. Originally just a ham-handed propaganda piece to glorify and justify the brutal Israelite conquest of Canaan, it has been profoundly twisted to make scientific and theological points it was never intended to make. It should be included, along with all the obsolete Biblical proof texts defending slavery, homophobia, and the subjugation of women, as another case study in the promotion of critical thinking and the advancement of humanity beyond its primal, tribal roots. Without throwing them in the dust-bin, it’s time to pull back the curtain on the original purpose and origin of these long-maligned and misused tales. They’re not history. They’re not science. And as long as we resist letting low-information Bible readers or literalists try and make these stories say what they were never meant to say, they offer us a glimpse into the mind-set of the imaginative and gifted propagandists who laid the foundation of Western civilization. ~ Rev. David M. Felten Read online here About the AuthorRev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions”. A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet. David and his wife Laura have three children. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Barb I have months to live. I'm not too hooked into christian symbolism but I would like to communicate with a person. I get that Spong is saying that we find God in us. And as such, the eternal also resides in us. My questions are more basic: does it matter which religion you pick to express your beliefs? Is there a Hell? A: By Fred Plumer Dear Barb, I am sorry you are having these kinds of concerns as you approach your last days or months on earth. I have said for decades that it does not matter which religion you chose, but rather, to ask: "Does this religion open up the world to me more, or does it close it for me?" I know of no Biblical scholars who believe in the concept of hell or a place of punishment after we die. Nor do most progressive clergy feel that way. The idea that religion is about punishment is frankly very sick according to most people who are serious scholars of the Bible, or frankly any religion. I believe life is a wonderful gift; I am 78 years old and closing in on my own death. I have no fear and it is not because I was clergy for over twenty five years; but it is because I have lived a long and wonderful life. It has been a gift and a blessing. And though I am still a progressive Christian by birth, I love the Buddhist tradition and the Jewish one as well. I will feel very lucky if this is all there is. However, I have been doing some reading on Near Death Experiences. These happen when some people die, sometimes for minutes and sometimes for hours, but then come back and live again to talk about what they experienced. At the very least they seem to suggest that our death can be a positive thing, with the possibility of something afterwards. But the interesting thing is the consistency in the way the literally thousands of people have told the same story, even though their deaths have been so different. At any rate please do not worry about hell or a judging God. I assure you that those things have been set up over the years as a way to control the masses. The concepts are outdated and wrong. May you have a pleasant passing with out worries. Warmly, Fred Plumer Read and share online here About the Author In 1986 Rev. Plumer was called to the Irvine United Congregational Church in Irvine, CA to lead a UCC new start church, where he remained until he retired in 2004. The church became known throughout the denomination as one of the more exciting and progressive mid-size congregations in the nation. He served on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Conference of the United Church of Christ (UCC) for five years, and chaired the Commission for Church Development and Evangelism for three of those years. In 2006 Fred was elected President of ProgressiveChristianity.org (originally called The Center for Progressive Christianity – TCPC) when it’s founder Jim Adams retired. As a member of the Executive Council for TCPC he wrote The Study Guide for The 8 Points by which we define: Progressive Christianity. He has had several articles published on church development, building faith communities and redefining the purpose of the enlightened Christian Church. His book Drink from the Well is an anthology from speeches, articles in eBulletins, and numerous publications that define the progressive Christianity movement as it evolves to meet new challenges in a rapidly changing world. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community! | | | | | | Join our FB community today! Spread the word, share with friends. Thanks! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Fourth Fundamental: Miracles and the Resurrection, Part III Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong August 15, 2007 In this series we first sought to identify the places in the Bible where miracles seem to appear in groups. There are only three: The Moses-Joshua cycle of stories, the Elijah-Elisha cycle and the Jesus-Apostles cycle. We then raised the question of whether there might be a connection between these three biblical collections. To destabilize the literal approach to the Bible, we noted that there is no evidence anywhere that we are able to locate that Jesus performed miracles until we come to the 8th decade writing of the earliest gospel, Mark. That means that it was at least forty years after the crucifixion before miracle stories appeared in the Jesus tradition. Next we examined the Moses miracle stories, which had to do with the power to change the world of nature. We then pointed out the many similarities between the nature miracles ascribed to Jesus and the nature miracles ascribed to Moses, concluding that these narratives may have been a deliberate attempt to interpret Jesus by magnifying Moses stories and retelling them about Jesus. A new pathway into the interpretive process is thus opened. Today we take the second step by looking at the cycle of miracle stories told about Elijah and Elisha. Here once again we find primarily accounts in which nature is manipulated to serve the needs of Israel, making them strongly reminiscent of Moses stories. Elijah and Elisha call down fire from heaven on their enemies, cause both rainfall and drought and both expand the food supply to prevent starvation. One healing story, however, does make its way into this cycle, the account of Naaman, the Syrian being cleansed of his leprosy by washing in the Jordan River. This is the first time that a personal healing miracle is recorded in the biblical story. It would be almost a century later before healing stories came to be a part of the thinking in the Jewish world, but when that happened it was not as miracles that happened in the here and now, but as signs that would accompany the coming of the anticipated Kingdom of God at the last day. That is, healing episodes entered the Jewish mindset on a regular basis only when they were associated with the end of the world or eschatology. This idea makes its first appearance in the Hebrew Scriptures in the writing of the prophet Isaiah who lived in the eighth century BCE about a hundred years after Elijah-Elisha. At that time the Assyrians were the dominant power in the Middle East. They had built a mighty army with horse drawn iron carriages providing history’s first “panzer divisions!” Their ruler Sennacherib was both a great military leader and a fearful tyrant. The Assyrians swept over all competition in the area. The opposing tribes fell one after another. In 721, after a pitiful attempt at resistance, the Northern Kingdom of Israel became one more victim of Assyrian power. Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom fell, the king was executed and the people were marched off into captivity never to be heard of again. They simply disappeared into the DNA of the Middle East and became known as the “ten lost tribes of Israel.” The little kingdom of Judah seeing the hopelessness of their situation and, in large measure under the influence of Isaiah the prophet, accepted vassal status instead of resisting. Isaiah seems to have been of a royal family and he clearly served as an advisor to several kings much like Bernard Baruch of a generation ago who served several presidents from Roosevelt to Eisenhower or in our time David Gergen who served Presidents Nixon, Ford, Bush and Clinton. With half of the Jewish nation gone forever, and the other half now an Assyrian puppet with no realistic hope of ever being independent again, the people of Israel no longer seemed to expect God’s vindication inside history. Now they began to dream about the end of the world when the Kingdom of God would dawn. Isaiah, in the 35th chapter of his book, spelled out the signs that would announce the coming of the Kingdom of God. You will know that the Kingdom of God has arrived when the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame leap and the mute sing, he wrote. It was a powerful image and it became part of Jewish messianic thinking, later becoming one of the ways through which the gospel writers interpreted Jesus of Nazareth. To understand how this passage from Isaiah shaped the gospel story is insightful. In both the gospels of Matthew and Luke, we are told that John the Baptist, who was in prison, began to despair that he might perish before the Kingdom, about which he had preached, actually arrived. As these gospels tell that story, Jesus was the object of the Baptist’s hopes and now perhaps he was also the cause of his despair. So they portray John the Baptist as sending messengers to Jesus with a simple question, “Are you the one who should come (i.e. the messiah) or do we look for another?” These gospels say that Jesus did not answer that question directly. Rather he told the messengers to return to John and tell him what they saw and heard. Then Jesus quoted directly and specifically from Isaiah 35. That is, Jesus claimed that the signs of the Kingdom’s arrival were present in him: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and the mute sing. Then Jesus was said to have added two other details to Isaiah’s list that reflected quite specifically Christian values, “The dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” The synoptic gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke depict Jesus as being surrounded by and even causing these signs of the Kingdom. There were the stories of the blind man from Bethsaida, whose blindness was healed in stages, and of Blind Bartimaus, the son of Timaus, who received his sight. There were stories about Jesus restoring hearing to the deaf, about Jesus loosing the tongue of the mute so that they could speak and stories about Jesus making the lame, the paralytic and the withered capable of walking. The point of this brief analysis is to suggest that the miracle stories that involve healing might well not be accounts of remembered supernatural deeds that Jesus did at all. It suggests that by treating them as literal stories we have badly misinterpreted the gospel writers’ intentions. The more probable explanation of the healing miracles is that when the gospel writers began to interpret Jesus as the messiah who came to inaugurate the Kingdom of God, they wrapped these signs of the Kingdom around his memory. The Jewish audiences for whom the gospels were originally written would have recognized the words of Isaiah that lay behind these narratives. If these stories were added to the tradition by these gospel writers as a way to identify him with the expected messiah, it would be easy to understand why there were no miracle stories in any earlier source, Paul, Q or Thomas, the only three sources that anyone suggests might have been prior to earlier the gospels. If you have journeyed with me this far, one final thing needs to be done. We must look deeply and critically at these miracle stories and ask what kind of blindness or deafness it was that Jesus actually cured? Is it the physical blindness or deafness of those whose eyes do not see or whose ears do not hear? Or is it the spiritual blindness of those who have eyes to see but see not, those who have ears to hear and hear not? Is Jesus talking about sight or insight, hearing or understanding? To focus this question look, for example, at the story of the blind man from Bethsaida, whose seeing is cured in stages. A close reading of Mark’s context makes us wonder whether Mark actually intended this to be a miracle story. I see it, rather, as a parable about the life of Peter. Please be aware that Peter hailed from Bethsaida, and that Mark’s gospel has, prior to this story, just told us that at Caesarea Philippi Peter had identified Jesus with the expected messiah, by naming him ‘the Christ.’ As that story continued, however, Jesus began to explain that the messianic role, which he was claiming, had to be lived out through the pathway of suffering and death. That was a concept Peter was not willing to accept and so Peter said: “No, No, Jesus that is not what messiah will be,” revealing that he did not really see. His sight had to be restored in stages. Indeed the gospels are clear that Peter was destined both to deny Jesus and forsake him before he would see. So my conclusion is that Peter was the blind man from Bethsaida. This would mean that it was a very different kind of blindness about which Jesus was concerned. It may also have been a very different kind of deafness, crippled status and an inability to speak the truth that was the real meaning of the miracles. Are miracles understood as supernatural interventions necessary to the Christ story? I clearly do not think so. Paul apparently did not think so. The world we live in today does not operate on the basis of miracles. Ours is an ordered world, not a chaotic world. There is, however, a force that is driving this world toward life, wholeness and, dare I say, toward God? God is the love that heals, that expands, that binds up our wounds, that sets us free to be. This is the God we meet in Jesus. That is why the disciples of Jesus who composed the first gospels claimed for him the role of messiah and then added to his life story healings, that were first introduced in the Elisha cycle and then later portrayed as the signs that Isaiah said would mark the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. We misread them as literal events, rather than what they are, interpretive signs. Do miracles happen today? Do prayers get answered by an intervening deity in miraculous ways? Something deep in us yearns to believe that, but such ideas have lost their credibility in our world. What has not lost credibility is that the God, who is the source of all our life, infuses life with the power to transcend our limits. The God who is the Source of love expands our capacity to love and thus to become more human, more loving, more whole. God who is the ground of being gives us the courage to be all that we can be. This is the God that people claimed they saw in Jesus. When we experience this God we do see, we do hear, our lameness gives way to wholeness and our tongues are loosed to speak of truth far beyond its normal limits. Others might call this a miracle. I call it entering the experience of God, which is the same thing as entering the fullness of your humanity. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements | | | A Virtual Journey of Mastery™ 9 Steps to fully experience the Awakened Master you are. Summer Journey – July 2 – September 3, 2019 In a select group of Awakened Masters, you experience a powerful 9-step process to: * Identify and align with your life’s purpose * Achieve the goals most important to you * Liberate yourself from limitations READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Rick Stanley's Completed Life
by Mari Crocker 27 May '19

27 May '19

Dear Colleagues, Those of you who are related to “second generation” OE members likely already have learned the sad news about Rick Stanley’s passing on May 22nd. His Mom, our dear colleague Anna, had just arrived at our home in Wells for a visit when she received the news. Rick experienced a heart attack while at his workplace in North Carolina a few days earlier, and the family sent his sister, Denise, to immediately travel from Maine to be at his side. Please hold his Rick’s parents, Anna and Dick Stanley, in your thoughts and prayers as they drive to North Carolina early next week; and also give thanks for the unconditional love Denise Stanley has consistently showered on her brother (and so many others.) As Joe Crocker would say, “The Mystery gives, the Mystery takes away. Blessed be the Mystery in our lives.” Grace, peace and love, Marilyn Crocker

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To Web manager: Please restore to email list
by Ellie Stock 24 May '19

24 May '19

Hi Web Manager-- Could you please restore Carleton Stock to both the dialogue and oe email lists? Somehow he was deleted. Thanks! carletonstock(a)aol.com Ellie Stockelliestock(a)aol.com

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Jim Campbell's new book will be sold on Amazon @ list price
by W. J. 22 May '19

22 May '19

Colleagues, it may be just a matter or hours or a day before Jim Campbell's new book, Facilitating Authentic Participation, will be listed on Amazon.com at $19.95.He has sold more than 150 copies at the preview price of $5 or less--all the way down to $4.67!Thank you for your tremendous support! And if you want to order multiple additional copies (as gifts to friends and/or other colleagues), please feel free to do so as long as the $5 price is available--or afterwards @ $19.95.And please--don't forget to send your (hopefully positive) reviews to Jim's book page on Amazon AND also to his Facebook page for Facilitating Authentic Participation.Wayne Marshall Jones, editor

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Winds&Waves reminder
by ICA International 20 May '19

20 May '19

Any problem reading this message please click or paste this URL in your browser's address bar http://windswaves.icai-archives.org/new-ww/ en français en español May 2019 This is a reminder for entries to our new Winds and Waves Magazine We are delighted to invite you to share your stories here via this link medium.com/winds-and-waves We also welcome videos that show the work you are doing. And we would be delighted if you would share stories from Winds and Waves on your own social media networks. For information about how to work with Winds and Waves on Medium: Please see attachment here Please be sure to send this invitation on to your ICA members and friends, colleagues, partners, family, so they too can participate. You can get further information by contacting us at icawindandwaves(a)gmail.com Best wishes, Robyn, Dharma, Roma, Rosemary, Isabel, Peter, for W&W team Published by The Institute of Cultural Affairs International, 401 Richmond Street, West, Toronto, ON. M5V 3A8, Canada All rights reserved. For more information or to unsubscribe, email: inform(a)ica-international.org

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Fw: published on Amazon.com!
by W. J. 17 May '19

17 May '19

Colleagues and friends, I am so pleased to report that Jim Campbell's new book, Facilitating Authentic Participation, was published on Amazon.com last Saturday to great success, thanks to your support! - The response to our 'preview' offer of just $5/copy has been so great that we may run out of our allotted promotional copies before May 31. - So if you want to take advantage of this one-time offer, please act now! - We're so sorry if you wait and are disappointed after our promotion ends, but you can always order your copy at the list price: $19.95. - We'd also like to ask those who order a 'preview' copy to please write a (hopefully positive) review and post it on the Amazon.com webpage for Jim's book. - If you've ordered and received your copy, please recommend Jim's book to your colleagues and friends by 'word of mouth' to help us find those who would most appreciate having this book as a professional resource. - We hope to increase awareness of Facilitating Authentic Participation among the wider circle of those actively engaged in leading group processes and professional group facilitators through your efforts in your professional networks. - So please help us get the word out! Facilitating Authentic Participation is 8.5 x 11 inches, 164 pages, and packed with insights and wisdom from a lifetime of teaching and practicing group facilitation skills, including the Technology of Participation©. Before his recent retirement Jim taught college courses on how to engage in 'The Cycle of Facilitation'. This book captures his core insights from his teaching career and his practice of facilitation on four continents. This is Jim's capstone contribution to the field of professional facilitation. It offers the most comprehensive approach to facilitating group decision-making, including details of every step of the process of preparation, delivery, and followup. Jim is offering a not-for-profit preview price of just $5.00 per copy until May 31, after which the list price of $19.95 will take effect. Click on this link to Amazon.com now to take advantage of this special offer! Please order your copy before the discount expires and post your review on Amazon.com. This price is available to Jim's colleagues, students, and friends who appreciate the value of his contribution to the field of facilitation. And if we get more than fifty reviews on Amazon.com, they will pay more attention to Jim's book! It's a must-have for all who aspire to sharpen, broaden, and deepen their facilitation skills and increase the value of their engagement with clients! Plus all who want to be more effective in managing conflicts in groups will want to use Jim's non-confrontational methods of releasing group creativity and creating consensus. A comprehensive and invaluable resource, highly recommended! —Martin Gilbraith It is really about what it means to fully love the whole journey of enabling the creativity that is released in the short time of actually being ‘on stage’. —Jack Gilles A comprehensive context for facilitation, plus great practical tools for every stage of the facilitator’s work, grounded with stories of experience at every stage. Anyone planning to become certified as a facilitator—or just to become a highly competent facilitator—will benefit from Jim’s experience. —Jo Nelson Scroll down to read more about Facilitating Authentic Participation. --Wayne Marshall Jones, editor About Facilitating Authentic Participation All too often, asking any group to work together without effective facilitation is a shortcut to disaster. —James M. Campbell In this revealing step-by-step guide, master group process facilitator James M. Campbell takes you behind the scenes of the usually hidden planning and diagnostic process leading up to the “magic” of guiding a group process that allows the group’s deepest wisdom to be shared in a feasible action plan that everyone is motivated to accomplish. What may look simple, effortless, and easy to accomplish is the culmination of an intensive series of consultative stages of preparation requiring the listening, analytical, and collaborative skills of a master facilitator. This is the text that shares the process that the author taught in university-level courses in Europe after a lifetime of innovative process work with groups on four continents. Jim has written elsewhere: ...people know that participating in creating their destiny is an essential part of their humanity... The process whereby people are enabled to experience this combination of the freeing of their humanity and the ownership which generates commitment and motivation is truly transformative. By the force of their own experience people realise that they can participate in creating their future and the future of their organisation or community. Thus people experience themselves as responsible for their destiny, and so resignation and despair are transformed into hope and belief-in-self. People’s anger and frustration at their disenfranchisement is transformed into energy invested in creating their destiny. This conviction—that authentic participation is transformative—has been the foundation of Jim’s work as a facilitator. Praise for Facilitating Authentic Participation Not just driving the process or holding the space, responsible facilitation requires skillful care and attention to the whole of the facilitation cycle. In this book Jim Campbell, a pioneer of our profession, draws on fifty years of diverse experience in the field to share practical examples and models, tools and tips to empower you, your clients and your groups—not least, as you navigate the too-often-overlooked early phases of the facilitator's role, before the process is designed or the space is opened. A comprehensive and invaluable resource, highly recommended! —Martin Gilbraith, IAF Certified Professional Facilitator; former Chair of the International Association of Facilitators; former President of the Institute of Cultural Affairs International. Just as the students in All Hallows College found Jim Campbell’s facilitation courses to be life- and career-enhancing, so too will the readers of this manual find much food for thought as they prepare to facilitate groups. In this new, so-called ‘post-truth’ age the facilitator who appreciates the need for responsible and ethical facilitation will find this manual extremely useful. —Margarita Synnott MTh, facilitator in adult education (retired), All Hallows College, Dublin. This is a book about being a disciplined facilitator. It is step by step guide to embracing the task of caring; for a client, the task, the process, the group, and oneself. It is really about what it means to fully love the whole journey of enabling the creativity that is released in the short time of actually being ‘on stage’. It is a serious advanced book for those who are learning the art of facilitation. Jim has taken his years of diverse experiences and distilled it into the essence of facilitation Mastery. —Jack Gilles has been doing Strategic Planning and Leadership Development for over 35 years, 22 of which were in India. He has also done work in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Zambia, Nigeria, Egypt, and Indonesia. Most of his work has been with the Private Sector. He resides in Mexico. A comprehensive context for facilitation, plus great practical tools for every stage of the facilitator’s work, grounded with stories of experience at every stage. Anyone planning to become certified as a facilitator—or just to become a highly competent facilitator—will benefit from Jim’s experience. —Jo Nelson, IAF Certified Professional Facilitator; ICA Certified ToP Facilitator; founding member of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF); ICA Associates, Inc., Toronto. Learning the facilitation cycle and its corresponding processes has given me a set of transferable skills that I will carry through my personal and professional life. —Elizabeth McBride MSc, Personal and Leadership Coach and Facilitator, Dublin. >From the Author There are many people and groups who have made it possible for me to do what I have done as a facilitator. I learned the basics of facilitation working with my colleagues in The Ecumenical Institute (EI) and the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA). Every group I ever worked with taught me more about being a facilitator, always challenging me and keeping me searching for how I could do better with the next group. The hundreds of people who trusted me in training sessions asked probing questions and pushed me to understand more deeply and more clearly the task of being a facilitator. Strangers on trains and airplanes asked me what I did and then: What does a facilitator do? While checking my passport, a U.S.A. Immigration officer asked me what I did, and when I told him I was a Group Process Consultant asked me what that involved, resulting in a ten-minute conversation. This book is dedicated to all of them, for they all shaped me and enabled me to learn and grow as a facilitator. About the Author - As one of the pioneers who helped define and develop the professional field of process facilitation, James M. Campbell has practiced and taught facilitation skills at the university level since 2004. He has designed and facilitated group process work in North America, Europe, Africa, and Latin America for local community groups, international corporations, United Nations agencies, and in the NGO sector, including groups such as CARE International in the Balkans. He was a planning consultant with the administration of ICTY (the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia). - Jim’s undergraduate teaching and his writing of this book based on his university courses is the capstone of a lifetime of work in the developing field of facilitation across four continents around the world. - Jim extended the International Association of Facilitators’ outreach in Europe and Middle East region starting in 1996. He has served on the IAF’s Global Board and was the European Regional Representative during the four years when the IAF’s European membership grew from around seventy-five to almost five hundred. He has contributed to IAF’s publications. - As a staff member of The Ecumenical Institute and the Institute of Cultural Affairs, Jim was instrumental in facilitating EI/ICA’s work with local community leadership in comprehensive socioeconomic reformulation, beginning with the Fifth City Human Development Project on Chicago’s West Side and extending the Fifth City Model to work with rural and urban communities in Kenya and Brazil. - Jim is a key contributor in developing the Technology of Participation (ToP)®, ICA’s proprietary structured facilitation methods for group work that draws upon more than a half century of experience in facilitating group processes, forging community consensus, developing locally based community organizations, and teaching imaginal education and group process methods in fifty nations around the world. - A native of western Pennsylvania, USA, Jim is a graduate of Pennsylvania’s Edinboro University. He joined the staff of The Ecumenical Institute after teaching high school in Iquique, Chile for three years. After his recent retirement as the director of the ICA’s Brussels office, Jim returned to Latin America where he lives with a Columbian family and pursues writing, consulting, training, and teaching. His memoir, A Journey of Beginnings, is forthcoming from Amazon.

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Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] 5/16/19, Progressing Spirit: Brian McLaren: What Am I Now?
by Ellie Stock 17 May '19

17 May '19

Hi Bud, When we were in the pastoral ministry, we used Brian's older book and the accompanying video for adult ed and leadership training. Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan have a lot of books and video series related to Jesus, Paul and Roman Empire. We journeyed with them in 2003 through Turkey, with many bus lectures on this topic. Ellie elliestock(a)aol.com -----Original Message----- From: H. A. Tillinghast <rev.bud(a)mac.com> To: Ellie Stock <elliestock(a)aol.com> Cc: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>; Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Sent: Fri, May 17, 2019 10:30 am Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] 5/16/19, Progressing Spirit: Brian McLaren: What Am I Now? Thanks, Ellie, for forwarding the Progressing Spirit emails. This column by Brian McLaren I found particularly stimulating. He, more than any other thinker for me, brings together the best of what is happening in present theology and religious movements. If anyone has another voice they find of like significance, I would be most happy to hear about that person. I’m currently working on trying to relate the work of the biblical scholars who point out the need to place the first two centuries of the Jesus movement in its context of and conflict with the Roman Empire. Then I’m trying to find what this means for today’s church set in today’s empire. The best book I have found tying these two together, one written ten years ago by Brian McLaren, is not among his books mentioned in this column. It is his “Everything Must Change: Jesus, global crises, and a revolution of hope.” I recommend it highly. Grace and Peace, Bud Tillinghast

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5/16/19, Progressing Spirit: Brian McLaren: What Am I Now?; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 17 May '19

17 May '19

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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4027885298 #yiv4027885298templateBody .yiv4027885298mcnTextContent, #yiv4027885298 #yiv4027885298templateBody .yiv4027885298mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv4027885298 #yiv4027885298templateFooter .yiv4027885298mcnTextContent, #yiv4027885298 #yiv4027885298templateFooter .yiv4027885298mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } Previously I shared a bit about my past, this piece turns to the present. | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | What Am I Now? | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Brian McLaren May 16, 2019[In my previous piece, I shared a bit about my past. This piece turns to the present.] I’ve just begun work on two books, the second of which is tentatively entitled, Do I Stay Christian? As I sketch out the shape and trajectory of the book, I’m thinking more deeply about why I still identify as Christian and what I think Christian can, and in fact, must come to mean in the decades ahead. Two adjectives are commonly added to Christian when people describe or introduce me and my colleagues. I would like to briefly reflect on those adjectives, emergent and progressive. [Of course, I have to first laugh at myself, because the title and subtitle of one of my better-selling books was a study in using adjectives to modify the problematic noun Christian: A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist, calvinist, anabaptist/anglican, methodist, catholic, green, incarnational, depressed-yet-hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian.] The word emergent is probably one of the most common terms associated with my name. The term is derived from two primary sources. In the world of botany, in an emergent wetland, plants rooted in one world (water) emerge into another (air). In the science of emergent properties, a complex system sometimes generates possibilities that go beyond the sum of its parts. For example, if you take a bunch of ants and put them together, you simply have a bunch of ants. But if those ants are organized in a colony, each ant has its role, and the colony has a collective functioning and capacity beyond what any and all individuals could do alone. [Similarly, one-hundred billion brain cells, if linked together by the right neural pathways, can create a sense of self and consciousness that the same cells could never experience apart from the network.] The intelligence of the colony, hive, or brain are emergent properties. Both definitions seemed to describe the experience of growing numbers of Christians in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. We felt that we were living in two worlds. Our roots were in Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, and Catholic institutions and traditions, all of which were deeply informed by premodern and hierarchical sensibilities augmented by modern and colonial sensibilities. We felt we were growing into some new postmodern and postcolonial space, and we felt that if we could connect and collaborate outside of traditional institutional mechanisms, something powerful, creative, and new could … emerge. We also felt that we were emerging beyond the liberal-conservative polarity that had so typified modern Christianity. We acknowledged our liberal and conservative heritages, but we felt that neither was offering us the resources we needed to move forward. So we were emerging into new space. [Sadly, but predictably, the word emergent was quickly “dumbed down” to mean singing chants and Taize songs, having worship stations, meeting around tables rather than in rows of pews, and so on. (Something similar has happened with the promising word missional.)] People often added another word after emergent, namely, movement. But I didn’t feel, and still don’t feel, that we ever achieved movement status. In movement theory, before a new movement can begin, several things have to happen.1. A group of people have to agree that the status quo isn’t working or is unacceptable. 2. They have to engage in critical conversations to understand what’s not working and what should be done differently, and they need to recruit a critical mass of diverse people to contribute to the critical conversations. 3. The participants in these critical conversations have to agree on what’s wrong and what’s needed, they have to decide to do what’s needed, and they have to identify the proposals, demands, goals, and strategy by which they will do what’s needed. 4. They have to try, fail, try, fail, and keep trying and failing until the elites who have the power to enforce the status quo are sufficiently weakened or divided, so that the movement has a possibility of success. 5. When the moment is right (“in the fullness of time,” to use biblical language), they have to attract needed resources (including money) and launch their strategy. I have felt that emergent Christianity has been working through the second of these stages for the last twenty years. We have been taking critical conversations to deeper and deeper levels, peeling the onion, so to speak, layer by layer, looking at matters of style, method, structure, leadership, substance, and vision. We have made a lot of progress in those twenty years, but I sense that we still haven’t penetrated to the depths of our challenges, nor have we come to wide agreement about what needs to be done. And although we have worked tirelessly to bring a more diverse group of people into the conversation, I don’t believe we have as yet reached either critical mass or diversity. As I see it, for the movement we dream of to be born in North America, we need the emergent wings of several communities to come together: Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, Historic Black, Latinex, Indigenous/Native/First Nations, Asian, Eastern Orthodox. These emergent wings are taking shape, but in different communities, and their size, strength, and stability vary greatly, as do their priorities and available energy for collaboration. In many cases, internal dynamics (i.e., tensions in the Black church community, or the Roman Catholic Community or the United Methodist communities) have been so preoccupying that trans-denominational collaboration has been stalled. Because the needed movement has not yet gained critical mass, many young (and some older) people in each wing are simply leaving Christian faith. It may be that we will only be ready to move on from the second stage when we have young leaders, and in light of our history, young leaders of color, who are willing and able to take the lead, supported (but not controlled!) by those of us who are older in years and paler in skin. It also may not be possible or appropriate for such a movement to be born in North America unless it is linked up and working in harmony with parallel movements around the world. In other words, the movement we need may not only be multi-racial and trans-denominational, but also international. And, I can imagine good reasons why it would be less than helpful for Christians to build such a movement alone. I can imagine why what we really need are parallel movements arising and collaborating from within Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Sikh, Humanist, and other communities. Having traveled to over 40 countries in the last few decades, I see these critical conversations springing up globally, across faiths, races, and denominations. There are encouraging signs of “movement pregnancy.” But births cannot be rushed. Meanwhile, proposals, demands, goals, and strategy continue to come into focus (3). But elites continue to gain ground in terms of financial wealth and control over political, educational, and religious institutions. Their hegemony could topple quickly, but as recent elections have shown, they will not give up without a fight (4). As yet, nowhere near the needed financial resources have been discovered by the proto-movements that are taking shape (5), but, that too, could quickly change with a few generous people. The word progressive well may be eclipsing the word emergent at this point, and it deserves some attention. The word means moving forward, and in that way, differs from a static, institutional liberalism that functioned as a static alternative to a static or regressive conservatism. For participants in the critical conversations described above, institutionalism, whether conservative or liberal, is being identified as one of our key problems. (Not institutions themselves, but institutionalism: a preoccupation with institutional self-protection rather than institutional mission.) Increasingly, I think, progressive implies an acknowledgement that we need to progress beyond static institutional liberalism. [More practically, the term progressive is being defined by many solely in terms of affirming LGBTQ equality, which implies that once one affirms equality, one is in a static new category called progressive and all our problems are solved. In this way, progressive can become a resistant or reactionary stance rather than a revolutionary and dynamic one. If all our energy is used up resisting and reacting to traditionalist, conservative, and regressive actions, we won’t be able to provide a constructive holistic vision of a desirable future, and that vision is absolutely necessary for a movement to occur. So the term progressive, like the term emergent, can quickly be dumbed down and its descriptive power blunted rather than sharpened.] When I think about myself and my work, two other terms are also in play, along with emergent and progressive. First, I believe the term contemplative will be key to the movement we need. The contemplative mind, as currently defined by Richard Rohr and others, is not just about exchanging old thoughts and beliefs for new thoughts and beliefs, but rather it is about an alternative way of thinking and believing. It is about including and transcending the dualistic mind (us/them, right/wrong, saved/damned, accepted/rejected) into something bigger and deeper. We might describe this non-dual or unitive mind as a whole-brained way of seeing that is simultaneously critical and conceptual (left brained), imaginative and mystical (right brained), and embodied (brain stem). This contemplative mind is within everyone’s reach, but many don’t even know it exists, and others may have had brief experiences of it, but haven’t been trained in practices that make it habitually accessible. This contemplative mindset is essential because it helps us see that achieving what we want depends on becoming who we need to be. If we want an ecological civilization, for example, we need to learn to deal with our own consumptive and acquisitive desires. If we want a genuinely peaceful world or nation or neighborhood, we need to learn to deal with our own inner conflicts, fears, hostilities, and rivalries. If we want a just and equitable world, we have to become just and equitable people. In this way, the contemplative mindset leads us to integrate our inner work with our outer work. This inner work is essential, but it is not sufficient; we can’t be satisfied with a more mystical or self-actualized version of organized religion in its current form. That brings me to a final word, activist. Activism demands that organized religion be transformed into organizing religion (as I discussed in my book, The Great Spiritual Migration). I’m supremely uninterested in a reinvigorated form of institutional Christianity that fills churches with happy, fulfilled consumers of religious goods and services, while the poor and vulnerable suffer, the oligarchs make a killing, conflicts rage on, and the planet burns. An emergent, progressive, contemplative, and activist Christian faith is what interests me today and draws me forward, just as it did decades ago, when I didn’t have the words to describe it.~ Brian D. McLaren Read online here About the Author Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. A former college English teacher and pastor, he is a passionate advocate for “a new kind of Christianity” – just, generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common good. He is an Auburn Senior Fellow and a leader in the Convergence Network, through which he is developing an innovative training/mentoring program for pastors, church planters, and lay leaders called Convergence Leadership Project. He works closely with the Center for Progressive Renewal/Convergence, the Wild Goose Festival and the Fair Food Program‘s Faith Working Group. His most recent joint project is an illustrated children’s book (for all ages) called Cory and the Seventh Story. Other recent books include: The Great Spiritual Migration, We Make the Road by Walking, and Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? (Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World). Brian has been active in networking and mentoring church planters and pastors since the mid 1980’s, and has assisted in the development of several new churches. He is a popular conference speaker and a frequent guest lecturer for denominational and ecumenical leadership gatherings – across the US and Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. He has written for or contributed interviews to many periodicals, including Leadership, Sojourners, Tikkun, Worship Leader, and Conversations. A frequent guest on television, radio, and news media programs, he has appeared on All Things Considered, Larry King Live, Nightline, On Being, and Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. His work has also been covered in Time, New York Times, Christianity Today, Christian Century, the Washington Post, Huffington Post, CNN.com, and many other print and online media. Brian is married to Grace, and they have four adult children and five grandchildren. His personal interests include wildlife and ecology, fly fishing and kayaking, music and songwriting, and literature. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Ron If our knowledge of God can only be accessed through faith, and if the divinity of Jesus can only be affirmed through faith, why do we act and speak as if faith is the same as empirical knowing? Wouldn’t we be further ahead in our spiritual journey and in our interaction with the world if we would present ourselves honestly by saying something like ‘I don’t ‘know’ God exists or that Jesus was divine in a greater sense than any of us? But I choose to live my life as if those things are true. That, to me, is faith and authenticity. It also protects me from the hubris of thinking that my tribe has the truth over all other truth claims. I’m interested in your perspective on this issue of faith vs knowledge. A: By Rev. Matthew Syrdal Dear Ron, I appreciate your question and observation, especially your ‘choice to live your life as if…’ which seems to be a wonderfully clear and authentic articulation of faith to me. Perhaps faith truly is less a question to be answered, and more a mystery to be lived. Unfortunately, part of the confusion you point out stems from the fact that the modern-scientific age of empiricism has co-opted the word ‘knowledge’, and our understanding of what ‘knowledge’ actually is. Knowledge in the ‘objective’ sense is very important for scientific measurement and forming the mathematical hypotheses that have brought miraculous advances across a diversity of fields in our age of globalizing and quantum technologies. The question is at what cost? Perhaps the cost of these advances has been the loss of the ‘deep subjective’ which is both experiential knowledge (gnosis in the Greek), and relational knowledge (intimate, as the Hebrew word yada insinuates; see Gen 3). The deep subjective is that ‘I-Thou’ relationship spoken of by Martin Buber, not to mention indigenous animistic peoples, religious mystics, and even many deep ecologists.According to folks like Carl Jung and Stephen Galegos and others, there are four functions, or ‘windows’ by which we can know the world. Only one of those windows is the privileged thinking function. The others are sensing, feeling, and intuition, or imagination. Each ‘window’ let’s part of the light into the house, so to speak, but not all of it. They are designed to work together. It could be argued that Albert Einstein, for example, had a more powerful imagination perhaps than even his capacity for critical thinking. My opinion, partially drawn from the study of indigenous peoples, the ancient prophets, mystics and shamans of various cultures, is that real faith goes far beyond ‘thinking’ — the subject-object dualism of the strategic mind must be in a sense overcome for advances in faith and consciousness. To be whole we must incorporate all four ‘windows’ in the fullness of our capacities (I-the Self) in relationship to the dynamic world, other, God (Thou). It makes me think of the way jazz musicians improvise together when they make music in such a deeply intuitive way that they enter a flow state. They might even say that the music is playing them. In this way, it is the deep subjective, not critical thinking, that is the primary referent of faith.~ Rev. Matthew Syrdal Read and share online here About the Author Reverend Matthew Syrdal M.Div., lives in the front range of Colorado with his beautiful family. Matt is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian church (USA), founder and lead guide of WilderSoul and Church of Lost Walls and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country. In his years of studying ancient Christian Rites of Initiation, world religions, anthropology, rites-of-passage and eco- psychology Matt seeks to re-wild what it means to be human. His work weaves in myth and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world in which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in the discovery of “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. Matt has been coaching, and guiding since becoming a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute and is currently training to become a soul initiation guide through the SAIP program. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community! | | | | | | Join our FB community today! Spread the word, share with friends. Thanks! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Miracles and the Resurrection The Fourth Fundamental, Part I Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong August 1, 2007 I return this week to our running series on the Five Fundamentals, that supposedly irreducible set of principles that believers were told had to be accepted as literally true if one wanted to be called a Christian. It was from the publication of these five fundamentals between the years 1910-1915, in a series of widely distributed tracts financed by the Union Oil Company (Unocal) of California, that the term “fundamentalist” entered the Christian vocabulary.In the fourth fundamental, two concepts were coupled together both of which had to do with acknowledging that supernatural, miraculous power was present in Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnation of God in human flesh. The literal historicity of the miracle stories of the New Testament was the first. These miracles were designed, it was said, to demonstrate the divinity of Christ who had the ability to do Godlike things. The second was the greatest miracle described in the New Testament that asserts that the divinity of Christ is best seen in the fact that he conquered death by walking physically and bodily out of his tomb on the third day after his death by crucifixion. On this primary supernatural act of the resurrection of Jesus in a physical bodily form that could be handled, touched and on which the wounds of crucifixion were visible, the fundamentalists declared that the whole Christian experience lives or dies.In the next few weeks in this column, I will examine both of these claims, biblically, historically and theologically. I need to note at the very beginning that few, if any, world class biblical and theological scholars would acknowledge the literal accuracy of either claim. Much to the dismay of the fundamentalists, however, these scholars continue to be practicing Christians. The gap between the Christian academy where biblical scholarship is engaged deeply and the pews, in which the typical worshiper sits on Sunday morning, has been growing for at least 250 years. I seek to bridge that gap in this series.Miracles first appear in the gospels in Mark, the first gospel to be written in the early seventies. They are in three general categories: first, the nature miracles, by which I mean stories depicting Jesus as being able to control or manipulate the natural laws of the universe. Examples of this category are the stories of Jesus walking on the water, stilling the storm, cursing a fig tree and causing it to die immediately and the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness with a limited number of loaves and fish. This feeding story is actually told twice in Mark, once on the Jewish side of the lake where five loaves and two fish are expanded to feed 5000 men, plus women and children and after all have eaten their fill twelve baskets of fragments are collected. Then Jesus moves to the Gentile side of the lake and with seven loaves and a few fish feeds 4000 people after which seven baskets of fragments are collected. Second there are the healing miracles. These healing stories in Mark fall basically into four categories: the blind receive their sight, the deaf hear, the lame (those with crippled or withered limbs) are made whole and the tongues of the mute are loosed so that they can speak or sing. Sometimes these categories are mixed since the inability to hear and the status of being mute are in some cases, two parts of the same affliction. Once we referred to this as being “deaf and dumb.” Third are the raising from the dead miracles. Mark records only one such episode, the restoration to life by Jesus of the daughter of Jairus, a synagogue leader. Every miraculous event attributed to Jesus in the first gospel to be written falls into one of these three categories.When we come to the second gospel, written about a decade after Mark (82-85 C. E.) and popularly attributed to Matthew, we note that this gospel is basically an expansion of Mark. Mathew clearly has Mark in front of him as he writes and quite literally incorporates about 90% of Mark’s content into his gospel. He expands that content, however, with his own additions, making his work a twenty-eight chapter book as opposed to Mark’s sixteen chapters. Matthew’s expansions include the genealogy of Jesus with which he opens his gospel, the introduction of the miraculous birth tradition, complete with stars in the east, magi, gold, frankincense and myrrh, the narrative parts of the temptation in the wilderness story, the Sermon on the Mount and some uniquely Matthean parables like the parable of the Last Judgment in which the sheep and the goats are separated. Matthew also expands Mark’s story of the resurrection from Mark’s original eight verses to twenty. For our purposes in discussing the miracles of Jesus, however, it is of note that Matthew includes every miracle story introduced by Mark. Matthew might vary the details in some of the recountings of Mark’s miracles, but nothing is changed so dramatically that the story is not easily recognized. There are no new miracle stories in his gospel.When we turn to Luke, who wrote either near the end of the 9th decade or in the early years of the 10th decade (88-92 C.E.), we discover that Luke also has Mark in front of him as he writes, but he is not nearly so dependent on Mark as Matthew has been. Luke incorporates about 50% of Mark into his gospel and also expands Mark dramatically, but in a different manner from Matthew. While Luke, like Matthew, adds a birth narrative and a genealogy, his major expansion is in the section of the gospel in which Jesus is teaching his disciples on the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. The journey section in Luke is about three times the length found in Mark. Luke also includes those parables of Jesus that are the most familiar to most of us and that appear nowhere else in the gospel tradition – the Good Samaritan; the Prodigal Son; the Unjust Ruler, and Lazarus and the Rich Man. Luke also changes the resurrection material dramatically, relocating it from Galilee, where it is centered in both Mark and Matthew, to Jerusalem. He also makes Jesus’ resurrection more obviously physical, while stretching his appearances out over 40 days. In addition Luke writes a new climax to the Jesus story by adding narratives of Jesus’ cosmic ascension and the Day of Pentecost, which are told only in Luke’s second volume that we know by the name of the Book of Acts.It is noteworthy to recognize that Luke edits Mark’s miracle stories dramatically, while adding new miracle accounts about which Mark seems not to know. For example, Luke omits Mark’s second feeding of the multitude story, but adds both a healing story (the cleansing of the ten lepers of whom only one, a Samaritan, returns to give thanks) and a new raising of the dead story (the only son of a widow in the village of Nain).When we come to the Fourth Gospel, John calls these supernatural events not miracles but “signs” and he develops them into long elaborate narratives with great theological monologues attached. Most of the Johannine signs can be correlated with earlier miracle stories, but two are unique to John. One is a nature miracle story, the account of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee and the other, a raising of the dead story that we know as the dramatic narrative in which Lazarus is raised from his four days old grave.That is the briefest possible summary of the miracles attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. If we are going to talk about and understand in any way what these supernatural events mean we must begin by becoming aware of their number and their nature. One cannot make sense of the miracle stories of the gospels with only a vague awareness of their content.One further observation will complete this first phase in our study of the miracles attributed to Jesus. No evidence has been found of miracles being attributed to Jesus in any other Christian writing prior to Mark in the 8th decade. Paul who wrote between 50-64 C.E. never refers to or mentions a supernatural act or a miracle that he attributes to Jesus. That omission in no way made Jesus less divine in the writings of Paul. It is clear in all of Paul’s writings that in Jesus God has been met, engaged or, in some way not always clearly articulated, experienced in a dramatically new way. Knowledge of Jesus possessing supernatural, miraculous ability, however, clearly did not seem to be part of Paul’s consciousness.A second source that many scholars date earlier than Mark is called Q, a hypothetical collection of the sayings of Jesus. When all of Mark was deleted from both Matthew and Luke, it was discovered that there were other sayings of Jesus that were identical or near identical in Matthew and Luke that were not Marcan. So the theory was developed that Matthew and Luke both had a second common source on which they drew in the composition of their gospels. Once this source was identified some scholars began to date this Q material even earlier than any of the gospels. I am not convinced by these arguments but those who espouse the Q hypothesis are learned people whose opinions must be taken seriously. However, my point is that if these scholars are accurate in their early dating of Q, it is noteworthy that there are no miracle stories in Q. Nor are there any in the Gospel of Thomas, discovered in the late 1940’s at Nag Hamadi and which some scholars believe was written before Mark.So these are the data we need to explore in this segment of our study of the five fundamentals. Miracle stories attributed to Jesus are no earlier than the 8th decade. They are in three categories: nature miracles, healing miracles and the raising of the dead miracles. Are they literal descriptions of historic happenings? I don’t think so. Is belief in the historicity of the biblical miracles a fundamental truth upon which Christianity hangs? Well only if you want to say Paul would not therefore have been a Christian. I hope this whets your appetite. This study will continue next week.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements 2019 Common Dreams Conference, Sacred Earth: Original Blessing, Our Common Home The 2019 Common Dreams Conference, Sacred Earth: Original Blessing, Our Common Home, will be held on 11-14 July at Newington College in Stanmore, Sydney, AU. The distinguished international keynote speaker will be Matthew Fox & the conference program is based on his concept of Creation Spirituality, which is rooted in ancient Judeo-Christian teaching, inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions; welcoming of the arts and artists; wisdom centered, prophetic, and committed to eco-justice, social justice and gender justice. Early Bird Discount ends May 31st - Click here for more information/registration. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Fwd: Don Cramer ~ My Ladder
by James Wiegel 17 May '19

17 May '19

A poem from Don Cramer > Subject: Don Cramer ~ My Ladder > > https://youtu.be/x36iksOLsNY > > > Jim Wiegel > Sent from my iPad

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