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July 2020

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7/23/20, Progressing Spirit, Roger Wolsey: A Call to Listen, Lament, Learn & Love; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 23 Jul '20

23 Jul '20

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.yiv7775278768mcnTextContent, #yiv7775278768 #yiv7775278768templateHeader .yiv7775278768mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7775278768 #yiv7775278768templateBody .yiv7775278768mcnTextContent, #yiv7775278768 #yiv7775278768templateBody .yiv7775278768mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7775278768 #yiv7775278768templateFooter .yiv7775278768mcnTextContent, #yiv7775278768 #yiv7775278768templateFooter .yiv7775278768mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A Call to Listen, Lament, Learn, & Love. | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev.Roger Wolsey July 23, 2020 Those of you who have been followers of the Progressing Spirit newsletter for the past few years may notice that it’s been quite a few months since one of my essays has been featured on this forum. While I am a member of the Board of Directors of ProgressiveChristianity.org, and have been a regularly featured contributing writer, I haven’t been asked to provide an essay for quite a while. I didn’t feel a need to inquire why. It seems that our leadership has intentionally been seeking to center and amplify the voices of women and people of color more and more. As a straight, white, male I could choose to feel slighted and offended by this – but that would be a pretty lame thing to choose. Indeed, it’d be petty and tone-deaf to the times. Rather than feeling slighted (there’s plenty of my writings already out there on the interwebs), I choose to be elated that Rev. Deshna Shine and ProgressiveChristianity.org have been adopting this diversifying, re-centering, mindset and approach prior to the recent Black Lives Matter revolution. They were discerning how best to serve this present age and anticipate its needs – well before others came on board. It was to my surprise that I received an invitation on June 20th to contribute an essay smack in the middle of the recent uprising. Because contributing writers are asked to write our essays weeks in advance of the date they will be published, this is one of the first essays in this newsletter written during this time of social unrest. And here I am, a straight, white, male being asked to weigh in. We writers are never told what to write about – but it’d be oblivious on my part if I were to opine about some theological nuance of progressive Christianity from an academic, cerebral, intellectual manner - as if such essays are written in a vacuum without any need to be relevant to social context. I write in the context of the twin global realities of Covid-19; and the increasing rejection of toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and white supremacy – including a growing rejection of religions which are perceived as promoting and maintaining those poisons. It’s been said that “Eleven a.m. on Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America.” It’s not just a saying, it’s a fact. Yes, there are a few congregations here and there that are notably diverse racially (but many of the most racially diverse congregations are not diverse when it comes to diversity and full inclusion of differences in gender and sexual orientations), yet such diverse congregations are outliers. They are the exceptions. They shouldn’t be exceptions that prove the rule. Yet, what should be the rule for the Church is full inclusion and celebration (not mere toleration) of the vast diversity of the people of God. American Christian congregations tend to be more American than Christian. And despite the much lauded rhetoric about the “rights and liberties of all” in its charter documents, the U.S. has tended to be far more embracing of the oppressing and segregating ways of empire than it has been noble, and in any way an exemplary and promising “light before the nations.” I already wrote about progressive Christianity and racism once before on this newsletter , what more can I as a white, Christian (albeit progressive), man say that would be of any help? I think it’s best for me to begin with some silence… .. … …. ……. And then to offer some words of a black pastor and scholar who we’d do well to know about and listen to: “Let us not rush to the language of healing, before understanding the fullness of the injury & the depth of the wound. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Let us not rush to offer a band-aid, when the gaping wound requires surgery & complete reconstruction. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Let us not offer false equivalencies, thereby diminishing the particular pain being felt in a particular circumstance in a particular historical moment. Let us not speak of reconciliation without speaking of reparations & restoration, or how we can repair the breach & how we can restore the loss. Let us not rush past the loss of this mother’s child, this father’s child…someone’s beloved son. Let us not value property over people; let us not protect material objects while human lives hang in the balance. Let us not value a false peace over a righteous justice. Let us not be afraid to sit with the ugliness, the messiness, & the pain that is life in community together. Let us not offer clichés to the grieving, those whose hearts are being torn asunder. Instead… ⠀ Let us mourn black & brown men & women, those killed extra judicially every 28 hours. Let us weep at a criminal justice system, which is neither blind nor just. Let us call for the mourning men & the wailing women, those willing to rend their garments of privilege & ease, & sit in the ashes of this nation’s original sin. Let us be silent when we don’t know what to say. Let us be humble & listen to the pain, rage, & grief pouring from the lips of our neighbors & friends. ⠀ Let us decrease, so that our brothers & sisters who live on the underside of history may increase. ⠀ Let us pray with our eyes open & our feet firmly planted on the ground. Let us listen to the shattering glass & let us smell the purifying fires, for it is the language of the unheard. God, in your mercy…⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Show me my own complicity in injustice.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Convict me for my indifference.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Forgive me when I have remained silent.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Equip me with a zeal for righteousness.⠀⠀⠀⠀ Never let me grow accustomed or acclimated to unrighteousness.” ~ Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce, Director of the Center for Black Church Studies & Associate Professor of Religion & Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary (words she wrote on Nov. 25, 2014 which I discovered on June 26th of this year) Yes. We need to begin with lament. We need to hear the winces of pain of those who are hurting. As Rabbi Goldie Milgram puts, it, “Lament is to remember where it hurts, how it got that way, to tell the journey, to honor the pain, not become the story.” Holding space for lament is sacred work and it is our holy calling at this time. The following are words that I wrote and posted on social media (Facebook) on May 25th: “In ordering our nation's flags to be lowered to half-staff over this Memorial Day weekend, the current president has finally given a modicum of recognition of our nation's grief. And so I lament. Dear God I'm hurting. It's been said that "hurt people hurt people" and my heart is breaking knowing that so many of my fellow humans are hurting so deeply and hurting one another. Yes, it's also the case that "hurt people help fellow hurt people" but let us not rush through these feelings. May we not fast-track or by-pass our grief. This is a time for us to really, and deeply, feel. Feel the hurt, feel our shock, feel grief, feel lament, feel anger, feel despair, feel angst... feel our hearts break. I think we fear feeling our hearts be broken. But that's just what hearts are designed to do. Hearts that don't break aren't being allowed to be real hearts. Let's be real hearts. Let's love, hurt, and break - knowing that only through brokenness can come true wholeness. May the lowered flags be more than a token gesture. May we allow seeing them to be the final log flowing through our bodies that causes our emotional dams to burst forth releasing a needed outpouring of tears. May we lament the ongoing racism and violent white supremacy in a country which too often seems to allow law enforcement officers to disproportionally brutalize and kill its black citizens. May we lament the completely unnecessary deaths of the (nearly now and soon to be over) 100,000 of our fellow Americans (and the many others around the world) due to horrible mismanagement of this pandemic. May we lament the lost jobs and financial challenges faced by billions of people as they struggle to survive. May we lament the loss of opportunities to gather as humans are meant to as social creatures, celebrating life through theater, dance, church services, weddings, graduations, anniversaries, and more. May we lament that so many of us yearn to return to the old normal as quickly as possible instead of embracing this time as an opportunity to re-imagine who we are and can be. May we lament the millions of lives senselessly taken in the dark pits of war. And may we use our hoarded stockpiles of toilet paper to mop up our needed outpouring of tears so we don't flood ourselves off the face of the earth.” While it is an understatement to say, “we’ve got our work cut out for us,” what’s being asked of us really isn’t too much to ask. It isn’t impossible. It’s not too hard. And it’s not too much to ask. Yet, it’s not tokenism. It’s not merely posting a “black square” on social media. And it’s not just suddenly buying and wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. It’s being willing to date and marry people of color. ..Being willing to have a pastor who is a person of color. ..Being willing to have people of color leading our religious denominations. ..Being willing to change the way we do worship to help it feel more inviting and welcoming to people of color. ..Being willing to break bread with and prayerfully kneel next to people of color. ..Being willing to worship “with” people of color in primarily POC congregations who are offering worship online via Zoom, Youtube, etc. ..Being willing to invite black pastors to serve as guest preachers and worship leaders for primarily white congregations online – and in person when the pandemic has abated/subsided. ..Being willing to either take down images of white Jesus; or add images featuring Jesus portrayed more accurately as a person of color; and/or being willing to have an artist darken the flesh on your current paintings of Jesus. ..Being willing to do the things that would actually reduce the massive incarceration rate of people of color – decriminalize and/or legalize drugs; end private prisons which inherently seek to enact laws to help keep their cells filled; change how police departments budget their monies so that they receive more training in engaging with mental health issues, more training in de-escalation, seeking to utilize the least violent measures possible in every interaction, seeking to hold police officers accountable for breaching the public trust in harming the people they are sworn to protect (which includes persons suspected or accused of committing crimes – whether guilty or innocent); ..Being willing to have our churches and/or national government pay restitution of some sort (perhaps $10k-300k to each black citizen who has family lineage in the U.S. dating back to 1865 or earlier, etc.); being willing to engage in reparations or restitution to native Americans whose lands we stole. ..Being willing to provide universal health care that provides mental health care, and increase the number of mental health workers per capita in the use. ..Being willing take down statues of known slave holders and racists (those who are on the wrong side of the Civil War), being willing to feature people of color as the faces we honor on our currency; Being willing to center and amplify the voices of people of color; being willing vote for persons of color; being willing to fully share power with people of color; and being willing to give up some of our current power to help that power-sharing be meaningful and real. And not just being willing to do these things – but actually doing them. If there’s any wisdom in what I’ve written here, may it be the kind that Jesus referred to with these words attributed to him: “Wisdom is made known through our deeds” ~ Matthew 11:19 More importantly, may we make the most of this truly challenging and difficult time to be alive on this planet – by putting our faith into action in such a way that the followers of Jesus might once again be known by our love - “See how they love!” ~ Rev. Roger Wolsey Read online here About the Author Rev. Roger Wolsey is a United Methodist pastor who resides in Grand Junction, CO. Roger is author of Kissing Fish: Christianity for people who don’t like Christianity and blogs for Patheos as The Holy Kiss and serves on the Board of Directors of ProgressiveChristianity.Org. Roger became “a Christian on purpose” during his college years and he experienced a call to ordained ministry two years after college. He values the Wesleyan approach to the faith and, as a certified spiritual director, he seeks to help others grow and mature. Roger enjoys yoga; playing trumpet; motorcycling; and camping with his son. He served as the Director of the Wesley Foundation campus ministry at the University of Colorado in Boulder for 14 years, and has served as pastor of churches in Minnesota, Iowa, and currently serves as the pastor of Fruita UMC in Colorado, and also serves as the "CRM" (Congregational Resource Minister/Church Consultant) for the Utah/Western Colorado District of the Mountain Sky Conference. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By A Reader Not long ago I discovered the facts provided by Rev. Spong about the Bible being interpreted in its correct historical context. It was information that I knew was the vital missing piece to my faith that I didn’t know how to find until that point. I had been trying for years to find the facts and he provided them in an accessible way besides going to a seminary school. It felt like I had been starving and finally found food. Also I understand his call to not abandon faith, but to see it in a new light. However this is easier said than done. I don’t feel too comfortable in Episcopalian services because it feels like that same old, literal view again being pushed onto the parishioners. I don’t know what my faith can be anymore and a part of me wants to give up. In the past I was constantly praying, going to church, and made faith a cornerstone of my life. Now I don’t know what to call myself, if anything, because I’m not sure what Jesus is besides a kind Jewish rabbi who was impactful to a group of Jews who wrote his life as propaganda to support their cause to add him to the list of prophets like Moses and Elijah. Should I look into Unitarian churches? I don’t know what to do. Thank you for your time. A: By Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt Dear Reader, Reading your question, I am filled with compassion for you because the nature of your faith has shifted significantly. First, you must allow yourself space to grieve the certainties you have lost. This acknowledgment of grief is as important as any spiritual practice. But take heart! You have gained much by choosing to take hold of the reigns in your faith journey. I can remember having similar questions about faith in my first semester of seminary. All the new information overwhelmed me, especially with regards to the Bible and its historical context. I felt like I was being tossed about in an ocean of doubt. Every new piece of knowledge was like another wave crashing over me. Meanwhile, my faith floated further and further away. In these moments, I would remind myself that I had traded certainty for freedom, but living into this freedom took years of work and still requires continuous upkeep. It requires a non-dualistic mind, and a lifetime of wrestling. This is the life of faith: it is allowing facts, doctrine, and interpretations to inform your inner work, but ultimately learning to trust your own instincts. It is learning to embody the belief of imago dei: that you are made in the image of God and the Spirit of God dwells within you. This means you not only have permission, but it is absolutely essential to become well-practiced in listening to your Spirit. No mentor, podcast, pastor, or book can do this for you. It is the road less traveled to be sure! Personally, two things have helped me along the way: going back and going forward. First, I have had to go back and reclaim the faith of my childhood. This is not to be confused with the faith I had at the start of seminary. I am talking about the mystical, wonder-filled, imaginative faith of my child-self, before all the indoctrination. I believe this is the posture Jesus was speaking of when he told us to be like little children. Going back to this place requires a lot of unlearning and deconstruction, but it also means we get to reimagine and create anew. I have also needed to move forward by finding community who engages faith in a way similar to me. I cannot learn to trust myself if I lack the safe environment to do the hard work involved and the people who are committed to this work. One reality resulting from COVID-19 is that a lot of churches have moved online, making the possibility of finding this kind of community more accessible. Our church has, and you are always invited to come find us on social media if you need more support on your journey. Finally, please take this as less of an “answer” and more of a “response.” It’s difficult to not get the answers we seek, but I take comfort in Jesus, who often answered questions with a question. It was as if he knew the life of faith couldn’t be sold so short as an easy answer. This is the kind of truth I wish to be held in. It’s not certain, but it’s free. It’s hard as hell, but it’s so, so good. I pray the same can be true for you in time. Blessings on your journey. ~ Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt is the Lead Pastor and a founder of Peace of Christ Church. She is a licensed Master of Social Work and sits on the Board of Advocates for the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work. Aurelia is President of the board for the Nevertheless, She Preached conference and co-chair of the Religious Liberty Council for the Baptist Joint Committee. You can follow her on Instagram @revaureliajoy to keep up with her sermons and writings at the intersection of justice and theology. | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the New Testament, Part II: Dating the Jesus of History Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong September 24, 2009 In order to understand the New Testament with any real integrity, it must be placed into its historic setting. The events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth did not happen in a vacuum, nor are these events history as history is now defined. Not only was Jesus born in, shaped by and interpreted through a particular context, but also the narrative details of his life found in the gospels were not recorded until somewhere between two and three generations after his life had come to its end. Both of these facts are ignored in many church circles today. First, we seek to fix the dates around the life of Jesus. That is accomplished by an appeal to both the remembered story of his life and to secular records that we can locate, which date other people who appear in his story. It is not an exact science but it is a trustworthy guide. Accounts of Jesus’ birth are recorded in only two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke, and both link his birth to the reign of King Herod, who was known as “Herod the Great.” Matthew, the earliest of these two sources, weaves his story of the Wise Men around references to the reign of Herod and the anticipation recorded in the prophet Micah that the messiah will come out of King David’s line and be born in King David’s birthplace, Bethlehem. He also casts Herod in the familiar Jewish role of the wicked king who, like the Pharaoh of old in Egypt, sought to destroy God’s promised deliverer. Matthew, in effect, retells the story of Moses’ being miraculously saved from death by divine intervention, but this time it is about Jesus. This attempt to wrap Moses’ stories around the memory of Jesus is illustrative of the Jewish interpretive tradition we call “Midrash.” While these stories are messianic interpretations and not remembered history, there is still no reason to suggest that this means that the anchoring of the birth of Jesus to the reign of Herod was itself fanciful. Matthew is even more specific, suggesting that the birth of Jesus took place near the end of Herod’s reign, just prior to his death. Secular records tell us that Herod reigned in this Jewish nation from 37 BCE to 4 BCE. We also know from historical records that, with Herod’s death, the Jewish nation was subdivided into three provinces, each ruled first by the sons of Herod and later by Roman procurators. That is the situation when the adult story of Jesus is brought to its conclusion. From both of these angles, the dating of Jesus’ birth fits with what we know of secular history. Luke confirms this tradition when he dates the births of both John the Baptist and Jesus as occurring when Herod was king of Judea. Luke adds that this was also when Caesar Augustus was on the throne of the Roman Empire and Quirinius was governor of Syria. Secular records reveal that only Quirinius, who did not come to power until 6-7CE, does not fit this historic reconstruction. Luke appears to have inserted Quirinius into his story to support his idea that a general taxation or enrollment was ordered in which people had to return to their family’s ancestral home, a device Luke used to explain how this birth happened to occur in Bethlehem. Once again, we observe how the historical facts in the birth story are blended into later messianic interpretations. The association of the birth of Jesus with the last year or years of Herod’s reign is, however, fairly clear in the memory of the Christian community. It is for these reasons that most scholars today date the birth of Jesus no later than 4 BCE, the date of the death of King Herod, and probably no earlier than 6 BCE. I tend to share in that bit of historic reconstruction and have adopted as “my best guess” the year 4 BCE as the time when Jesus was born. I am fairly certain, however, that his birth took place in Nazareth, as the first gospel of Mark assumes, and that the Bethlehem birth tradition is a later messianic development. It was Paul, writing to the Romans around the year 58 CE, who first claimed that Jesus was in the Davidic line and thus heir to his throne. This was the reference that ultimately gave rise to a Bethlehem birth story. So, with the birth date fairly accurately set, we search for a way to determine the date on which the end of the life of Jesus occurred. Once again we discover that the gospel tradition is clear in associating the crucifixion of Jesus with the procuratorship of a Roman official known as Pontius Pilate. Although Pilate is not mentioned in Paul, the first gospel of Mark, written in the early years of the 8th decade of the Common Era, anchors the Passion of Jesus in the reign of Pilate so deeply that it would be hard to suggest that these two things were not deeply linked. Pilate enters Mark’s gospel when the arrested Jesus, having been interrogated by the Jewish authorities, is delivered to Pilate early in the morning of the day of the crucifixion. Pilate receives ten other mentions in Mark’s gospel, all associated with the passion story, the last one occurring when Pilate allowed the body, now confirmed to be dead, to be delivered to Joseph of Arimathea for burial. While the historicity of this burial narrative in the newly hewn tomb in the garden of this Joseph is largely doubted, the connection between the crucifixion and Pilate is not. Matthew links Pilate with the crucifixion in nine references. Luke has twelve in number, including two pre-crucifixion mentions, one to date the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry and the other to chronicle Pilate’s role in a previous Galilean uprising. John raises the number of Pilate references to twenty-one. It is also worth noting that, in these two later gospels of Luke and John, Pilate grows into a more and more sympathetic figure, while Judas and the Jewish leadership grow more and more negative. We thus can see in the texts themselves traditions and memories changing and developing. To complete the biblical record, Pilate is mentioned three times in the Book of Acts, which is really volume two of Luke, and always in speeches attributed to the apostles Peter and Paul. There is only one reference to Pilate in the epistle I Timothy, an epistle whose Pauline authorship is universally denied and is dated in a much later period of Christian history. So, once again, without claiming more than history can validate, it seems clear that the crucifixion of Jesus was connected to the reign of a man named Pontius Pilate as Roman procurator. That being settled, we can then go to Roman records to learn that Pilate served in this post in Judea from 26-36 CE, which gives us the limits within which to locate the crucifixion. Through other means, too lengthy to go into here but leaning on narratives about his removal recorded by Josephus, a Jewish historian, we can narrow down that eleven-year span and state the high probability that the crucifixion happened around the year 30 CE. This guess could be off by some two years on either side, but it still remains the closest we can come to certainty. So our conclusion is that Jesus lived between 6 BCE and 32 CE at the outside and probably 4 BCE to 30 CE would be our best guess. His life span would thus have been 34 to 38 years. I have no doubt that Jesus was a figure of history and am completely unimpressed by those recent writers who have tried to prove that he was a mythological figure of Jewish or early Christian fantasy based on Egyptian sources. I think the biographical notes recorded in one of Paul’s early and authentic epistles (Galatians 1:18-24) are determinative. Paul relates a conversation that he had with Peter and James, whom he identified as “the Lord’s brother,” some three years after his conversion. The early 20th century church historian, Adolf Harnack, has stated that Paul’s conversion had to have occurred within “one to six years” after the crucifixion, so this conversation to which Paul refers had to have occurred no less than four and no more than nine years after the death of Jesus. That is far too short a span of time for mythology to develop. This means that while all the details of the Jesus story are clearly not historical, Jesus himself is. So we locate Jesus in human history as having lived between roughly 4 BCE and 30 CE. Two things become obvious immediately from this dating exercise. First, Jesus’ entire life was lived as a Jew under the domination of the Roman Empire. He was a part of a conquered and oppressed people. Rome first took over the rule of this land in 65 BCE in an alliance with the successors of the Maccabees and ruled it with an iron hand until the fall of the Roman Empire. That included a war against a Jewish rebellion that occurred between 66-73 CE which totally destroyed the Jewish nation, including Jerusalem and the Temple. While that destruction happened well after the life of Jesus, it did occur before any of the gospels were written. Scholars now believe that this later destruction of Jerusalem has shaped the memory of Jesus in the gospels far more than was once was recognized. We will look at this assertion later. The second conclusion that this dating exercise makes obvious is that the earliest records we have of anyone writing anything about Jesus is in the works of Paul, who did his writing between 51 and 64 CE, or 21 to 34 years after the death of Jesus. That means there is a total absence and thus a total silence for at least 20 years before any single detail about the life of Jesus was written down. Even then, we need to note that Paul tells us very little about the life of Jesus and that Paul died before any gospel had been written. The gospels from which we get most of our image of Jesus were written between the early 70’s and the late 90’s, or some 40 to 70 years after the death of Jesus. This means that the gospels are not eyewitness accounts, but are rather the product of the second, third and even fourth generation of Christians. The gospels were also written in Greek, a language that neither Jesus nor his disciples spoke or wrote. We need to dispense with the idea that these books are either history or biography. That should be enough to disestablish many of the assumptions that faithful, but not necessarily learned, people have made over the centuries about the New Testament. It also sets the stage for us to begin to examine these Christian Scriptures with fresh eyes and open minds. That is what I hope to do as this series unfolds. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Building on the popular Call of This Moment anti-racism workshop, this second class will focus on concrete practices to build anti-racist community. This workshop will build on materials presented in the previous workshop - watch The Call of This Moment before July 22. You may purchase it here. The class will run from 7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 22nd and Thursday, July 23rd. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Earthling Love
by Robertson Work 21 Jul '20

21 Jul '20

Dear colleagues, My new book, Earthling Love: Living Poems, has just been launched. Here is the URL: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578711257<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…> A half-price sale is in effect for one week. Hope you enjoy these poems celebrating Earth, humanity, family, and self. I decided to share these eighty-two poems written over fifty-five years to care for Those Who Care in these challenging times. There are poems about Earthrise, the Christ Word, the peace movement, joy, grief, love, happiness, gratitude, a river, a mountain, grandchildren, and much more. Hope you enjoy them and share them with family and friends. Click here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578711257<https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…> Later, please write a review on Amazon. Thank you. Please stay safe and healthy, Rob Compassionate Civilization Collaborative (C3) ................................................................................................ New book (2020): Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love, and Gratitude https://www.amazon.com/dp/1684716160<https://www.amazon.com/Serving-People-Planet-Mystery-Gratitude/dp/1684716160> Previous book (2017): A Compassionate Civilization: The Urgency of Sustainable Development and Mindful Activism https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546972617 Blog: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/<https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/><https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/> LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsonwork/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/compassionatecivilization/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/movementofmovementsMOM/

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7/16/20, Progressing Spirituality, Aurelia Davila Pratt: Breaking Free From Supremacy Theology, Part Two
by Ellie Stock 18 Jul '20

18 Jul '20

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#yiv2948850713templateHeader .yiv2948850713mcnTextContent p{font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv2948850713 #yiv2948850713templateBody .yiv2948850713mcnTextContent, #yiv2948850713 #yiv2948850713templateBody .yiv2948850713mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv2948850713 #yiv2948850713templateFooter .yiv2948850713mcnTextContent, #yiv2948850713 #yiv2948850713templateFooter .yiv2948850713mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Breaking Free From Supremacy Theology, Part Two | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt July 16, 2020Naming the Messages that Bind Us When I wrote part one of this article, the world was on the cusp of global pandemic. The day it was published, my family and I began our quarantine. Four months later, I am still socially distancing, wearing a mask when I venture out, and pastoring virtually. The world has changed significantly, but also, it hasn’t. COVID-19 has uncovered some long-existing truths concerning the treatment of the most vulnerable in our country. Shared outrage over the Black lived experience has led to months of historic protests all over the U.S. And yet the trauma that people of color in our country carry – especially Black and Indigenous people – is nothing new. White supremacy, in its many systemic forms, continues to keep us all bound. Pandemic or not, the work of Liberation through anti-racism and decolonization continues. For people of faith, this work includes breaking free from supremacy informed theology. Naming these frameworks that prop up the oppression of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) is crucial to our healing. For white people of faith, both naming and understanding how you may be complicit in perpetuating these messages should be a part of your Liberation work. Embodiment Wielding harmful interpretations of the biblical text, supremacy theology has stolen the power of embodiment from us through the glorification of the spiritual and the demonization of the physical. As a result, we live our lives disconnected from our bodies, developing unhealthy relationships with over-work, food, sex, and image. Womxn[1] are especially harmed from this messaging. We’ve been oversexualized from a young age and taught that our bodies were made for two things: childbearing and the sexual pleasure of men. Alongside this message of submission, we’ve also been told not to trust our bodies. This mass indoctrination sustains the justification of violence against us. All of our bodies need freedom and healing from this messaging, but womxn and especially BIWOC[2] have been affected the most. These harms are compounded at the intersection of race because basic human dignity is denied to BIPOC in our society. The murder and lack of justice for Breonna Taylor is but one glaring example of the Black womxn’s experience currently. A white supremacist-informed theology has nourished the roots of our political and social structures, sending the message that black and brown bodies are inferior, untrustworthy and must be policed and subdued. Shame in the guise of humility Supremacy informed theology doesn’t stop at forcing shame upon our physical bodies. Along with the messages around embodiment, we are taught not to trust our voices or experiences. Scripture is used in order to keep us mentally and emotionally bound to patriarchal structures (i.e. “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure”). We’ve also been indoctrinated to adhere to the love and respect myth, sending the message that husbands, male faith leaders, male coworkers, etc. are more competent and capable. Furthermore, when harm from men inevitably befalls us – whether it is emotional, physical, or sexual harm – supremacy theology tells us that we are to blame. This mass manipulation has been used to keep womxn bound to systems of oppression. It’s important to acknowledge that womxn of color, especially Black and Indigenous womxn, continue to bear the brunt of this harm. Valerie Saiving suggested that theology has defined the human condition on the basis of the masculine experience[3]. As a result, womxn will often stifle our impulses when they do not fit the patriarchal narrative. Personally, this has been true each time I neglect cultivating confidence or taking pride in my gifts as a leader. I’ve seen firsthand that suppressing my own thriving does not serve the community I pastor, but I have to work in defiance of a double standard each time I lean into these instincts. Part of breaking free is rejecting the message of shame veiled in the illusion of a “Proverbs 31-woman” humility. I untangle myself from supremacy theology every time I trust my own voice, boldly and without apology. Feminine characteristics as weakness Patriarchy rears its ugly head again, using scripture to uphold and perpetuate toxic masculinity, which frames traditionally feminine characteristics as provocative, distrustful, and weak. This messaging largely informs how womxn are treated within the Church and beyond. I am reminded of a conversation between a male pastor friend and a colleague, in which they pondered why men don’t go to church. My friend suggested that perhaps it’s because one is often required to risk vulnerability by turning inward and facing tough feelings at church. He suggested this is the kind of thing boys are rarely taught to do. Men, therefore, are not practiced in them. His colleague suggested that men don’t go to church when they don’t like the pastor. He suggested that “if the pastor is too feminine” they will be turned off by the church as a whole. In this case, “feminine” was used as shorthand for “weak.” When vulnerability and emotional depth are societal markers of femininity, and when femininity is equated as weakness, everyone suffers. We live half lives as the body of Christ because the fullness of God’s image is blatantly rejected. Yet, this is the kind of thinking that is rampant in the Church. It results in men struggling or refusing to accept the leadership of womxn, resulting in the silencing of prophetic womxn voices. We must disentangle ourselves from this messaging and call out toxic masculinity for what it is: a domination system that perpetuates harmful theological interpretations.The “White and Polite” social construct White culture sets societal norms, including politeness[4]. The concept of politeness is then rooted in Scripture, whether through the “fruits of the Spirit” or through the definition of love (i.e. 1 Corinthians 13.) The power of politeness cannot not be ignored. For BIPOC, when this norm is not adhered to, tone policing and gaslighting will follow. Honesty is reframed as contentious, vulnerability that isn’t “positive” is upsetting, and pain rooted in colonization and racism is either minimized or disregarded. White fragility takes center stage, upholding the dominant culture and preventing BIPOC voices from being heard. When we speak, we speak from the margins. This is a language in and of itself, and we must alter it daily in order to be accepted. The necessity of code switching steals much of our energy. I experience this exhaustion often as a brown woman pastor who navigates a predominately white, southern, Christian context. I have found myself apologizing for being too much. I have spent a lot of time filtering my fire. Interactions with white males have come with the assumption that it is my job to prove my competence before I will be afforded respect. This underhanded litmus test includes abiding by the societal norms of politeness as defined by the dominant culture. If I do pass the test, they hold power over me. If I don’t pass it, I am denied. Either way, I am bound. The more I untangle myself from supremacy theology, the more I realize this is unnecessary and unloving. I must name and reject this way of operating so that I can live into the fullness of my Imago Dei. Racial trauma through the absorption of white shame/guilt As we do this deeply personal work of breaking free, we inevitably discover a long road of anti racist work ahead. Navigating this as a white person looks like listening and learning. It looks like acknowledging privilege, relinquishing power, and decentering whiteness by elevating BIPOC voices. As a non Black WOC[5], my anti racist work also includes a lot of listening, learning and acknowledging privilege. But it also has its own unique set of responsibilities. Navigating this work within a predominantly white world can be difficult. In my context, I am surrounded by incredible white people who are committed to anti-racism work. However, this work brings up a lot of shame and guilt for them. I must take great care to protect my energy, so that I am not retraumatized through the absorption of it. As a pastor of a predominantly white church, I am learning how to make room for their process, while also holding space for myself and other BIPOC, who make up a minority of our sacred community. It is important to acknowledge that we all have different relationships with white supremacy. A non-dualistic, nuanced approach is essential as we work toward the common goal of Liberation. One of our pastors worded this challenge well. He said “When we don’t acknowledge a message’s intended audience, we are assuming audience homogeneity, which really just means we’re assuming everyone is dominant culture / white.[6]” We cannot be color blind. Our collective breaking free is not a homogenous experience. We must voice the many intricacies and intersections. Otherwise, we risk further perpetuating dominant norms. This adds to racial trauma and the continued marginalization of BIPOC through the unwanted absorption of white shame and guilt. The path to healing Naming theological frameworks rooted in oppression is crucial to all our healing. We name them in order to soundly reject them. It was in my sermon writing process that I first woke up to the extent to which I am bound. I spent nearly a decade believing myself to be an imposter, both incompetent and unintelligent. Now, I can name and reject these messages each time they threaten to keep me from my work. Doing so has made me a better pastor and preacher. Most importantly, I am more whole. We name oppressive theology so we can break free from it, both in how we understand ourselves and in how we understand God. The more we untangle ourselves, the more we discover how unnecessary it is for the image of God to be limited, exclusive, or triggering in any way. Because of this realization, we are able to love ourselves and others in a way more reflective of Christ. And we can know without a doubt that God is ever present, both within us and around us. It is the decolonized God who will gently tend to us: loving us, empowering us, and nursing us back to good health.~Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt Read online here About the Author Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt is the Lead Pastor and a founder of Peace of Christ Church. She is a licensed Master of Social Work and sits on the Board of Advocates for the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work. Aurelia is President of the board for the Nevertheless, She Preached conference and co-chair of the Religious Liberty Council for the Baptist Joint Committee. You can follow her on Instagram @revaureliajoy to keep up with her sermons and writings at the intersection of justice and theology. __________________________[1] An alternative, intersectional term for women inclusive of those who are trans and nonbinary[2] Black, Indigenous and womxn of color[3] Womanspirit Rising, Carol P. Christ & Judith Plaskow, 1979[4] I am speaking specifically from within a U.S. context[5] Womxn of color[6] Rev. Matthew Hanzelka, Pastor of Community Care at Peace of Christ Church | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Jennie I enjoyed the column by Dr. [Thew] Forrester Living Christs of Touch, but John 8:44 has always been problematic for me. For example, in 8:44 Jesus tells the Jews who don't believe in him that they are children of the devil. What is the Progressive commentary on this passage? Is this where some anti-Semitic tropes find a source? Even Luther has vile language that could have come from this. A: By Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.Dear Jennie,Let me begin by saying there is no commentary which is “the” Progressive one. There is a range of possibilities when interpreting any passage, which is why we continue to return to the scriptures from our ever-changing circumstances to discover different shades of meaning in the texts. Historical context is critical. Those communities of the early Christ movement that are shaped by John’s spirituality felt under attack and on the defensive. We know that Jesus was born, lived, and crucified a Jew. His preaching and healing and table-gathering ministries were for the Jewish people. His earliest followers were overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, Jewish. He was a Jewish Rabbi committed to reforming 1st century Judaism. In the end Pharisaical Judaism would evolve into Rabbinical Judaism and, in a sense, its vision became the primary expression of Judaism and not that of Jesus (although they shared much more in common than many realize). When Jesus’ message failed to take hold within mainstream Judaism, the early Christ movement struggled with its identity. In its fear for survival, John’s community defensively produced some writings that placed harsh blame on Jews, such as in 8.44. This was an ominous development, wherein John’s rhetorical anti-Judaism sowed some seeds of later anti-Semitism. The tragic irony is now quite clear since Christianity is an offspring of Judaism unable to be whole without a complete embrace of its Hebrew ancestry. Inchoate in John’s spirituality, which at times is stunning in its beauty, is the unfortunate distortion of Rabbi Jesus into an “object of belief” that invites later dogmatic orthodoxy and intolerance. This spirituality vacillates between a Logos of Love that would draw us into an ever-deepening realization of Jesus as an embodiment of a spiritual path rooted in direct experience of Belovedness; and, Jesus as an exclusive, divisive, Divine figure. In one way, this is the tension between the gospels of John and Thomas: John tends to make Jesus into an exclusionary fulcrum, whereas in Thomas, Jesus-as-Christ is who we are each called to be. Harvey Cox’s, The Future of Faith, catches what is at stake. In the early Christ movement, experience, not belief, is what captured and motivated the heart. What we find in some passages of John, and not him alone, is the tenacious tug of fear in the face of difficult experiences. This gravitational pull will, in time, all too often draw the Christ movement away from exploring the direct experiences of Belovedness in our lives (which is the heart of Rabbi Jesus’ spiritual path). Instead there will be an increasingly reactive instinct toward a mental dogmatic theology that will draw boundaries that divide, disparage, devalue, and demonize what is not understood.~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. Read and share online here About the Author Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including I Have Called You Friends, Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms, and My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You and Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland. Visit Kevin’s Blog: Essential Living: For The Soul’s Journey. | | | | | | | | 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 Origins of the New Testament, Part I: Introduction Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong September 17, 2009I launch today a series of columns that will appear regularly over the next twelve to eighteen months. As I always do in this column, this series will augment the essays that are time sensitive and that seek to illumine contemporary issues through my theological lens. Last week’s column on the health care debate is a case in point. The purpose of this unfolding series is to take you, my readers, deeply into those books that constitute the New Testament. There are twenty-seven in number and together they form the volume that arguably has been the most influential and shaping piece of narrative writing in the history of the world. The earliest book of the New Testament is probably I Thessalonians, generally dated around the year 51 CE, while the latest is probably II Peter, generally dated around the year 135 CE. The influence of this book, while always powerful, has been both positive and negative. On the positive side it is clear that the institution called the Christian Church, which grew out of these twenty-seven books, has inspired quite literally millions of people in many ways. Most of the great universities of the world were begun as part of the Christian Church’s commitment to knowledge and, in particular, to impart to people the saving knowledge of the sacred scriptures. Most of our healing institutions, from hospitals to hospice, arose out of that Christian sense that every human life is of infinite worth, which carried with it the compelling need to alleviate suffering insofar as it is possible. Most of the great art of the ages, at least up until the 17th century, has as its content scenes from these twenty-seven books. These art treasures are of such immense value today that for the most part they are stored in the world’s greatest museums as a constant source of enrichment for the people. Most of the great music of the ages, at least up until the dawn of modernity, was an attempt to put the primary themes of the New Testament into the indelible sounds that we today still recognize and sing. One thinks of the St. Matthew Passion and the St. John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach and of the Christmas Oratorio, “Messiah” by George Frederick Handel as familiar and much loved cultural treasures. One cannot understand the history of the Western world or explore these cultural artifacts without becoming deeply aware of the impact the New Testament has had on the life of our civilization. There is, however, also a dark side of the New Testament that must be faced and lifted beyond the stained glass accents of antiquity into full consciousness. The New Testament has had victims whose lives have been diminished at best and destroyed at worst by the direct impact of reading from this “sacred” source. I think of the Jewish people who have suffered throughout Christian history because of this book. The words attributed to the Jewish crowd by Matthew in his narrative of the crucifixion, “his blood be upon us and upon our children,” have caused much Jewish blood to flow in everything from the Crusades to the Holocaust. The Fourth Gospel’s use of the phrase “The Jews,” spoken so often through clenched teeth, has not infrequently been used to legitimize anti-Semitism. The portrayal of a man called Judas, a name that is nothing but the Greek spelling of the name for the entire Jewish nation, as the anti-hero of the Jesus story, served to give permission to Christians through the ages to justify their feeling of revenge against this ethnic group of people. Lost in this hostile passion is the truth that Jesus was a Jew, the disciples were all Jews and the writers of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament were also Jews. The only possible exception to this statement is Luke, thought to be the author of both the gospel that bears his name and the book of Acts, who is believed to have been born a Gentile, but to have converted to Judaism and thus to have come through the Synagogue into the Church. This means that when we read the New Testament, we are reading only the words of Jewish writers, interpreting the experience and impact of the Jewish Jesus primarily in the light of the Jewish Scriptures and under the ongoing influence of the Synagogue traditions of the Jews. Yet these books have fueled over the centuries a killing frenzy of anti-Semitism. The single greatest carrier of this hostility has been nothing less than our Sunday school curricula and materials. Jewish people thus have a hard time seeing these twenty-seven books as “sacred scriptures.” The institution of slavery was affirmed throughout history from words in the New Testament. Slavery was practiced in the west by God-fearing, Bible-reading Christians. The popes at various times owned slaves. The section of the United States that fought fiercely to preserve this evil institution was also known as the Bible Belt. It was the Bible-reading people of the South who made lynching legal, who replaced slavery with segregation and who resisted every effort to keep racial justice from being achieved. Much of their justification for this behavior came from quoting St. Paul, who in his letter to Philemon urged the runaway slave Onesimus to return to his master, while simultaneously urging Philemon, his master, to be forgiving to his slave. In the Epistle to the Colossians, Paul, or one of his disciples, instructed slaves to be obedient and masters to be kind. Perhaps it could be said that a kinder and gentler slavery is better than a cruel and harsh one, but it is to be noted that Paul clearly accepted the legitimacy of this cruel institution, making no effort to abolish it and thus legitimizing it in the minds of others for centuries. One wonders how those who were enslaved and their descendents might view the New Testament from which texts were cited to justify both slavery and second-class citizenship. These scriptures were not sources of life to these victims of our prejudice. Women have also not fared well at the hands of these male written, male read and male interpreted books of the New Testament. They have rather fed the deep-seated cultural misogyny of the ages with such admonitions as those found in Ephesians for wives to obey their husbands, or in Corinthians for women to keep quiet in church, or in Timothy where women are forbidden to exercise authority over men. Under the influence of the New Testament women in the Christian world were denied higher education for centuries. As a result they were denied entrance into the professions, denied the right to vote, denied the ability to own property in their own name and denied leadership roles in the Christian world until well into the 20th century. When progress did come for women it was driven by the secular spirit while organized religion as expressed in the Christian Church resisted these changes with scripture-quoting vehemence. In major sections of the world this anti-feminist Bible-laced rhetoric continues to be articulated both officially through ecclesiastical bodies and by individual believers. One wonders how women would ever be drawn to the texts of this book. The same could also be said for the victimization of the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender segments of our population. They too have lived throughout history with Bible-fueled hostility that manifested itself in gay bashing and in actual murder. Texts were quoted from Romans that called homosexuality “unnatural” and condemned it, to references in other epistles that mistranslated the Greek word arcenokoitus, which refers to a passive male, as deviant, sodomite or pervert, even though its original meaning appears to have been male prostitutes. There is no doubt that the center of homophobia in the western world today remains the Christian Church, now ghettoized from the mainstream of society, and is regularly articulated by Christian voices from the Pope to Pat Robertson. One wonders how homosexual people could ever appreciate the message of the New Testament. In my experience, I do not find it possible to overestimate the levels of biblical ignorance present today inside the Christian population. Most of these just-cited abuses rise out of that ignorance. Much preaching that emanates from both Catholic and Protestant pulpits not only reflects that ignorance, but also continues to spread it. In this series of columns I will, therefore, attempt to counter this biblical ignorance and to break the grip that it has on much of our population. While seeking to avoid the technicalities of biblical scholarship that seem to amuse so many in the academy, I will try to state clearly how these books came to be written and so endeavor to oppose the rampant literal misunderstanding that embraces so much of our culture today in regard to the Bible. I will go into both the meaning and the key points of each book in the New Testament, as I have done in past years with the books of the Old Testament. I will try to show the differences among the four gospels that reveal more contradictions than most people believe to be possible. I hope you will enjoy the journey. I know I will. One final note. A number of small churches across the English-speaking world now use this column for their Sunday morning adult education classes. These essays are subscribed to by the members of the various classes with extra copies reproduced for visitors so that the class and the discussion can have a common basis for discussion. The leader of the class simply convenes the group and introduces the topic. That leadership role can be constant or rotated so long as the purpose is accomplished to allow people to discuss issues openly, to raise any questions they wish and to engage in any debate that arises. When the group gets too large for discussion, it subdivides into two groups. I am gratified to learn this and rejoice that this column might be an instrument in the New Reformation for which many of us yearn. At the very least I hope people find a richness in this book that small ecclesiastical minds have tried for centuries to hide from the average pew sitter. Have fun!~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Love in Action – Conversations with Andrew Harvey Join Andrew Harvey for a powerful LIVE lecture and Q&A session, Thursday July 23rd at 4pm PT, 7pm ET. Find the meaning you’ve been searching for in this global crisis… and discover how love-in-action, compassion, and sacred activism can reshape your experience of these unprecedented times. READ ON... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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7/09/20, Progressing Spirit, Kevin Forrester: Common Ground; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 09 Jul '20

09 Jul '20

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#yiv9813259658templateHeader .yiv9813259658mcnTextContent p{font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv9813259658 #yiv9813259658templateBody .yiv9813259658mcnTextContent, #yiv9813259658 #yiv9813259658templateBody .yiv9813259658mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv9813259658 #yiv9813259658templateFooter .yiv9813259658mcnTextContent, #yiv9813259658 #yiv9813259658templateFooter .yiv9813259658mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Common Ground | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. July 9, 2020A democracy is only able to function and prosper if its diverse citizenry shares a common sense of what is good. A political common good, however, is made possible by the presence of common ground; this ground is the Reality of Being, the Essence of all that is. Without spiritual common ground, which is Being, the fragile political common good is a chimera, evident in the cultural blindness to and destruction of the beauty of George Floyd. On one level, common ground is the spiritual space we create as we identify and pursue shared values. On a deeper level, we discover that the ground we share has always already been present. This ground is common because it is the Essence of what we are. Realizing our common ground is a spiritual path that radically changes how we perceive and receive one another. In its absence, fear blindly drives us to survive and we destroy beauty misperceived as threats. During the inquisitorial religious madness of Europe’s Dark Ages, Meister Eckhart perceived with a clarity unlike most. In stark contrast to the prevailing culture he realized that “God is nearer to me than myself . . . He is also near and present for a stone or piece of wood, but they know nothing about this fact.” Amid pervasive and pandemic institutional fear of women and color and laity – of trust in human experience – Eckhart was developing a new language to express the True Nature of the very Ground of Reality; a language expressive of human experience as disclosive of the divine. In this spiritual path the human journey is not to connect a depraved humanity with a distant judgmental God-object, but to realize that the graciously empty Ground of Reality is the eternal Essence of everything, every one, that comes to be. (Here, Eckhart was not far from the Buddhist realization that which is form is emptiness and that which is emptiness, form.) As he surveyed the early 14th century Eckhart beheld a church and its piety riddled with this false perception of creation living at a distance from the divine. This misperception was a dense fog shrouding medieval life, dulling experience, and blinding recognition of Reality. His preaching was ceaseless fire burning through the haze, awakening receptive hearts to the truth that creatures, simply as creatures, are divine. Nature is inherently sacred since it is nothing other than the bodying-forth of God. For the transformed heart “all things become simply God to you, for in all things you notice and love only God.” All that is is nothing other than God manifesting; Reality empty of all egoic identity and striving. Eckhart was rediscovering a largely forgotten truth in the West: to be a human being is to have a heart longing to know the simple truth of its own nature. Recognizing, respecting, and courageously tending to this longing is the authentic human life, which is nothing other than the mystical life. Engaging the mystical life, we undertake the human journey whereby we discover we are blessed from the beginning not by being one with God, but by being of God: breaking through the fog to know directly from our own experience that “God’s ground is my ground, and my ground is God’s ground.” In this discovery is the human realization of our Christic nature. Eckhart identifies three threads that intertwine like the braids of a Celtic spiral creating this spiritual path. As we follow this path we penetrate ever deeper and ever wider into the divine common ground. When we finally break through we taste for ourselves that everyone is nothing but the presence of boundless Being. We recognize each creature is Christ and our response is compassionate reception and a restorative justice that lifts and removes the knee pressed down upon any holy one – and every one is a holy one. Thread One: Letting-Go If we are to experience the ground of Being, we must learn to be in silence and stillness; we need to come to know our shadow and learn to let pass those thoughts and reactions that ordinarily hold our attention. This spiritual practice gradually becomes integral to our daily living. The practice is to let go of images and reactions and passions (realizing emptiness). Letting go is neither denial nor denigration. We learn to release because these occupying attachments contract awareness and cause attention to become stuck on transient phenomena. Creation is so beautiful that our ego wants possession; attention becomes habitually absorbed by minutiae and we miss the subtle presence of Being itself. The heart is discovering how to release what in fact cannot be held. We learn to become aware of the subtle presence of Holy Mystery arising as this spacious moment. As we become less identified with the desires and revulsions of our personalities, gracious space arises. The foreground of mental activity recedes so that the Ground of Reality may manifest. This is not a stingy act of suppression but a kind practice of noticing and releasing and relaxing. We can be surprised that in letting go we might feel a sense of “poverty.” “He is a poor person who wills nothing and knows nothing and has nothing.” Eckhart adds: “true poverty of spirit consists in keeping oneself so free of God and of all one’s works that if God wants to act in the soul, God himself becomes the place wherein he wants to act – and this God likes to do.” As our soul becomes empty of ordinary preoccupations, we experience what Buddhism calls emptiness: the soul is as the sky, boundless space with clouds passing through. For Christians, this emptiness is the spacious presence of Holy Mystery, present as the absence of ordinary preoccupations. In this direct experience of Holy Mystery, names and language can clutter. Eckhart invites us to let go even of God. Language seduces us into believing we know what Reality is. All the names we have learned to address Holy Mystery get in the way of simply being present with Reality. We forget that God, too, is a name, a symbol pointing to a Reality beyond the confines of all names. Beyond every name lies the true fullness of Holy Mystery, which Eckhart calls the Godhead. The Godhead is Holy Mystery beyond all images and names. Godhead arises as boundless, silent, Holy Ground. This spiritual path is not a practice of coming to arrive in the otherness of boundless love, but of being Boundless Love. All divisions burned away. Every form being only empty boundless Holy Mystery. …..You should love God mindlessly, that is, so that your soul is without mind and free …..from all mental activities… You should love him as he is, a not-God, not-mind, …..not person, not- image – even more, as he is a pure, clear One, separate from …..all twoness. Thread Two: Birthing As we grow in our capacity to release, we experience ourselves continually being born anew. The logos (or spiritual dynamic) of this path is that the birthing process never ends. The Mystery is that there is no end state to our spiritual maturation as authentic humans of Being. We continue to discover identifications, fixations, reactions that divide, confuse and fog Reality. Spiritual practice is our continual birthing into spacious awareness, and this birthing is being birthed as Christ. Thread Three: Breakthrough In this spiritual path our practice is breakthrough from the fog of our limited and small sense of self. Just as an infant must leave the mother’s womb to survive and thrive, so too must we shed our small egoic self, our precious personality, and allow our soul to discover her boundless Ground of Being. This death is deliverance. “In this death the soul loses all her desires, all images, all understandings and all form and is stripped of all her being. . . This spirit is dead and is buried in the Godhead, for the Godhead lives as no other than itself.” What the soul discovers is who she has always been from the beginning but did not know. The only path into this awareness has been her willingness to forsake “all things, God and creatures.” The complete surprise is that in realizing the Ground of Being she has returned to the land of her soul. She is home. The soul now knows the most precious Absolute truth: whoever we behold is Holy Mystery beautifully embodied. This means that when the police officer casually placed his knee upon the neck of George Floyd and pressed his face into the pavement, he was grinding the bones of the beautiful face of Holy Mystery into the concrete. Nothing else. Nothing less. Without the breakthrough to common ground a spiritual path through the fog of hatred – not uncommonly expressed a social “niceness” – is not truly possible; the common good becomes hostage to human blindness, and ruthlessly tribal. In truth, we live in a culture where Holy Mystery – contracted by ego into meanness and hatred – is speaking to our heart, asking to become known and realized once again as the land of our soul.~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. Read online here About the Author Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including I Have Called You Friends, Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms, and My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You and Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland. Visit Kevin’s Blog: Essential Living: For The Soul’s Journey. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Jillian I would be interested to learn if you think people will return to church and prayer – in a time of chaos and crisis? Do you think people need something to “cling to?” Here in Australia we are also in shut down mode and I fear for those who are already in debt, lost jobs, business closed and the mental health aspect of some. I’ve read of suicides after the Great Depression, share market collapse and you hope that it doesn’t occur again. As I’m an interested political volunteer, I suggested words of hope and encouragement might be needed rather than “Do this or else you’ll die” which is not particularly comforting. Not everyone will die. A: By Rev. Fran Pratt Dear Jillian,It's interesting you ask this question. I personally think it's more a time of "letting go" than of "clinging to." I think this is a moment of collective apocalypse - meaning, a great revealing, or unveiling. And I see, at least here in the US, a lot of structures that need tearing down; and I believe this drawn-out moment is clarifying that reality for many people. Here we are literally tearing down colonialist and exploitative-capitalist monuments. And I think the slowdown of economies is highlighting things we can let go of and feel free to radically re-imagine going forward. I don’t need people to be in church, necessarily. But I do hope that the Church can become a voice for change. I hope it can get over its ego and overcome its centuries-long history of capitulation to empire and active participation in colonization. Again, this is a case of the Church needing to be rebuilt and re-imagined. In many cases, our leaving speaks louder than our staying. I think a lot of folks are realizing that, and also that the Church is not the only sacred space. People are getting creative and making sacred space in zoom calls and protests and marches and distanced outdoor visits. People are learning to “pray with their feet.” Basically, I think people who are doggedly asleep, are mostly going to remain asleep. But I pray that a higher consciousness prevails and is "contagious" in terms of waking up to the Kin-dom of God and its availability to us in this moment. And, I let go of control of other people, while hanging on to compassion and empathy (and indeed hands-and-feet helping) for those who are desperate. I agree that "do this or die" is not helpful, and I've been pleasantly surprised by the messaging I've seen around here that is more along the lines of "we're in this together, we can do hard things, etc." I’ve been encouraged by the response here in the US to the increased visibility of racism and systemic inequity, a badly needed awakening by the white majority. And I hope that the awakening will give way to Right Action, politically and societally. The things I personally cling to are very broad and generous: That the divine is ultimately loving and good. That we are lovingly given free will on this earth. That the challenges we encounter are here to teach us. That we can learn to live inside a paradigm of abundance (Kin-dom) rather than a paradigm of scarcity. That every human is made in the image of the Divine and deserving of dignity and safety. That we have agency and capacity for change. For me, if those are here, then here is Church. I can let go of what doesn’t align. ~ Rev. Fran Pratt Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Fran Pratt is a pastor, writer, musician, and mystic. Making meaningful and beautiful liturgy to be spoken, practiced, and sung, is at the heart of her creative drive. Fran authored a book of congregational litanies, and regularly creates and shares modern liturgy on her website and Patreon. Her prayers are prayed in churches of various sizes and traditions across the globe. She writes, speaks, and consults on melding ancient and new liturgical streams in faith and worship. Fran is Pastor of Worship and Liturgy at Peace of Christ Church in Round Rock, Texas. | | | | | | | | 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 Seeking to Understand the Rhetoric of the Health Reform Debate Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong September 10. 2009I went to my local post office in New Jersey last week only to be confronted by a group of demonstrators who had set up a table filled with pamphlets and information about the communist plot to take over health care in America. Several slogans were quite visible on their posters. One said “Stop Socialist Medicine,” another portrayed President Obama with the signature moustache of Adolf Hitler. Some of the available literature hinted that the proposed health care reforms were actually part of a plot to cut medical costs by euthanizing senior citizens. Making a cameo appearance in this new setting was the old abortion issue, with the suggestion that Obama’s health care reform proposal was a not-so-subtle attempt to finance abortion with public funds and thus to violate the consciences of the pro-life minority. People walking in and out of the post office were given the various fear lines and were urged to pick up materials that would validate their wildest charges. What we had witnessed on television at Town Meetings across the country had now appeared in our local community. As an advocate of free speech guaranteed to us by the Constitution of the United States I do not oppose anyone seeking, by whatever lawful means they choose, to win public support for whatever issue they espouse. I do find it interesting to note, however, that while the content of the issues that draw out this kind of paranoid response changes from time to time, the emotions of at least a small segment of the American population that always seems to be threatened to the point of hysteria by changing law, changing practice and even changing consciousness, remain the same. It is not the content of the heath care reform debate, but the reality of these extreme emotions that show up in every period of social transition that I seek to understand today.In order to set this discussion into a context of history, recall that the primary theme in America’s 2008 presidential campaign was “change.” Mr. Obama not only ran on that theme, but he also embodied it. He was an African-American candidate. Never before in the history of the world has a nation chosen as its highest leader a member of a racial minority that had once been enslaved and then segregated by the majority. This was an amazing accomplishment. One obvious sign of that election was that racism, so deep in our national character, was now in a steep decline. If that change was not significant enough, this 47-year-old Illinois Senator represented a new, post-baby-boomer generation. The torch of leadership that had moved from the World War II generation to the Vietnam generation with the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 and in 1996 had now passed rather swiftly beyond Vietnam to a generation skeptical of all wars of aggression and especially the failed wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Obama further epitomized change in his outspoken defense of equality for women in all areas of life and in his clear opposition to any law or practice that calls into question the full rights of America’s gay and lesbian population. His actions and subsequent appointments made these convictions clear and operative. In this election our nation had voted by large majorities to surge forward to embrace a new world. Such a surge, however, inevitably carries many people whose ability to adapt to change is limited into the backwaters of debilitating fear and gives birth to the rhetoric of paranoia that we are now seeing.Prior to this election much of this latent and irrational anger in our body politic had been focused on homophobia, the popular wedge issue during the years of George W. Bush’s administration. That prejudice had, however, run its course and had been largely relegated to the uninformed and increasingly irrelevant religious voices that typically represent the past. There was Pope Benedict XVI, well into his 80s, articulating a long since abandoned theory that homosexuality was an abnormality, a sickness or at least a deviation from the norm that should be changed if possible and repressed if not. There was evangelist Pat Robertson, also an octogenarian, who loses credibility on issue after issue by quoting a literal Bible and by suggesting that God will send hurricanes to punish gay-friendly communities. Finally, there was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, younger but still dated, trying to preserve the last vestige of the British Empire, known as the Anglican Communion, by sacrificing women, gay people and modern knowledge on the altar of Christian unity. These voices of yesterday have no real credibility except among those who inhabit America’s religious ghettoes and among the populations of the third world that have not yet achieved access to the modern world. Few people today buy yesterday’s rhetoric that “the institution of marriage is being undermined by gay lobbyists” or that “acceptance of homosexuality will lead to generalized moral degeneracy.” The day of playing the “homosexual card” to create a winning political strategy has clearly passed. All of the movement is now in the other direction. Vermont has changed civil unions to equal marriage for gay and lesbian couples. Iowa has enacted laws making gay marriage legal. The national assemblies of both the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America have passed resolutions by large majorities opening the process of ordination of deacons, priests and bishops to qualified candidates irrespective of their sexual orientation and asserting that those who live in faithful, monogamous homosexual partnerships are completely acceptable for election and confirmation in any position the church has to offer. These two church bodies are also preparing liturgies suitable for gay marriages to be ready soon.If one looks at the history of fear and paranoia in the body politic of this nation, it is clear that homosexual people simply replaced black people as “legitimate” targets for those ever-present wells of hostility that had nowhere to go when racism began to die. Now it has become equally inappropriate to treat gay and lesbians as outcasts, so the anger, fear and paranoia of those who cannot adjust to a new world had to find another target. The health care debate offered that in spades. Those afraid of change fastened onto this subject with stunning swiftness.The depth of people’s anxiety over change, augmented by the insecurity brought on by the economic turndown and fueled by the powerful industries making fortunes on health care now coalesced to create an epidemic of fear in the debate over the reform of our health care system. So sudden, so hostile and irrational was the depth of the public response that even the Obama administration appeared to be caught off guard. When they recovered their political moorings they revealed a lack of understanding by attacking the absurdities rather than addressing the substance of people’s fears. Now, recognizing that mistake, they have attempted to recapture the initiative by having the president address a joint session of the Congress and to use that opportunity to refocus the debate. The work of reform will now have a chance to move on. To do so at least four principles will need to be faced and addressed. - There is at present enormous waste in American health care. We spend 17% of our gross national product on health care, which is 40% to 50% higher than in any other developed nation, almost all of which have nationalized health care programs. Despite this cost, a significant portion of our population is without heath insurance and even more stand to lose it if they become unemployed. There is no evidence to suggest that this greater cost makes better health care possible and indeed much evidence that it does not. In fragmented “private” systems, tests are regularly duplicated by doctors who do not have access to previous test results. - People need to recognize that they are already paying an enormous premium to cover those who have no insurance. If health care were universal, then the premiums for all people would go down. Hospitals across this land are required by law to care for those who come to them in need of help. This is so regardless of whether they have insurance or whether they are citizens, legal aliens or illegal aliens. The charge that the proposed health reform bill will cover health care for illegal aliens is nothing more than a smokescreen scare tactic. The real issue is that emergency room medical care, which the uninsured are now using, is the most expensive care possible and emergency room doctors have no ability to practice wellness or preventive care. It would thus be far cheaper to offer medical care to all people than to continue the present system. Health care reform must not be held hostage to xenophobic immigration fears. - Reality must be faced in that if no reform of our present system is forthcoming, health care as presently practiced in America will not be sustainable for anyone. Businesses will continue to cut back benefits and will look for reasons to dismiss those with pre-existing conditions that are costly. Health care will become a luxury for the rich and the stability of our entire way of life will be called into question. - Finally the time has come for this nation and our elected leaders to face the fact that universal health care is a moral issue. This administration must claim and defend this high ground if this debate is to be successfully won. Nothing dissipates fear as quickly as successful leadership. Nothing feeds fear more than weak and ineffective waffling. Failure at this moment would be a national catastrophe, an act of surrender to the most irrational voices in the land, the voices of fear, anger and paranoia in the face of change. A note from history may be helpful: when Social Security was passed in the Franklin Roosevelt administration, a similar rhetoric of government takeover, socialism, and communism rang throughout the land. The media voice of that day was not Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity but a Catholic priest named Father Charles Coughlin, but the misinformation was the same. That administration took the heat, passed the program and the rest is history. I pass on to our President the words of a very wise man: “When you do an audacious thing, you do not then tremble at your own audacity.”~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Films for an anti-racist education We’re highlighting a number of films about Systemic Racism. The Power to Heal reveals how Medicare fights racial segregation in the U.S. healthcare system; A Dangerous Idea reveals the gross history of eugenics and ongoing biological nonsense used to justify the pathology of white privilege; and Love & Solidarity explores how non-violent protests lead by Rev. James Lawson have proven an effective strategy. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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FW: ICA Social Research Center Spring 2020 Sojourn Report & Invitation to Engage
by Lynda C 09 Jul '20

09 Jul '20

July 2020 Colleagues, In the wake of the social inequality protests, violence and civil unrest, the climate crisis, and the virus pandemic, caring organizations everywhere are seeking effective direction which can be used to shape the New Normal. We invite you to join with the ICA Social Research Center’s work on making the Global Archives inviting and available as a research tool for reshaping organizations and communities. This interactive report ICA Social Research Center Spring 2020 Sojourn Report <http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/pdf2/Spring%20Sojourn%202020%20Report%2…> of the May virtual gathering is divided into Nine Research Arenas or Collections. Read the insights for each collection articulated by the 102 persons who participated in the event. Select one collection to focus on: view its video and explore its collection more deeply. Note that the icon on each page will take you directly into that Collection on the website. Then give us your feedback: - What about the collection catches your attention? - What words, phrases or visuals made you want to look deeper? - What needs to be clarified? Added? Reworked? - How would you be willing to assist in this endeavor? You are invited to engage with our team to enhance and expand this work. ○ Do you have archive files that would be helpful to add to the website? If so, please make a PDF copy and e-mail to: ICA Social Research Center at globalarchives(a)ica-usa.org. ○ What stories could you write to share on the website built on the wisdom of past work? (for examples see Human Development: Majuro for Lee and Leah Early stories; see Institute Foundations for Hilde Betonte stories; see Imaginal Education: Elementary for Jann McGuire story). ○ If you are willing to assist enhancing the website pages, contact the related Collection Guide (see names and e-mail addresses at the end of the report). ○ Invite other people you know to explore the treasure trove of wisdom in these collections for their arenas of engagement in building a better society. ○ Help the work that Marge Philbrook and many others have initiated by making a contribution to the Archives Fund in memory of Marge or other departed archive angels or pledge a monthly gift: https://www.ica-usa.org/donate.html On behalf of the the ICA Social Research Center Team, Lynda Cock USA

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Global Buzz July
by ICA International 06 Jul '20

06 Jul '20

Enjoy catching up with what is happening in ICAs across the globe.... And please click the link below for the latest issue of the Global Buzz Global Buzz Report: July 2020 or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/7dayreport-20/2020-07-01.php Read the latest ICAI Winds & Waves Magazine brought to you now on Medium.com See here: https://medium.com/winds-and-waves ICAI Communications

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HAPPY JULY 4th, 2020!!!
by Ellie Stock 04 Jul '20

04 Jul '20

Dear Friends, HAPPY JULY 4, 2020!!! A Declaration of Interdependence . . . Today, we celebratethe ideals and promiseof this nation—Life, Liberty, Justice,and the Pursuit of Happinessfor ALL—forthe Common Good (animal, vegetable, mineral—humanity, Earth and ALL thatis in it) and resolveto addressitsinjusticesand challenges! Have a great day! Carleton and Ellie

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David Zahrt
by Terry Bergdall 03 Jul '20

03 Jul '20

I first met David in 1970, lived and worked with him in Nairobi during the 80s, and most recently was inspired by his participation in a coast-to-coast march to highlight the urgency of climate change in 2015. When the marchers arrived in Chicago in September, their route went through the heart of Fifth City on Jackson Boulevard as they proceeded to the GreenRise Building in Uptown where the 50 or so marchers had dinner and spent the night. As David rode his bike past the Iron Man statue on Jackson, a group of Fifth Citizens and ICA "veterans" stopped with him to take a photo (see attached). David, of course, is the man at the left with a white beard. It's one of my favorite memories with David. Terry Bergdall

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Completed Life of David Zahrt
by Ellie Stock 03 Jul '20

03 Jul '20

Dear Friends, We were sad to learn of David's death, although we knew his health had been failing. When we think of David Zahrt, four initial memories come to mind. First: We first met and worked with David and Lin in 1970 after Summer 70 when they came to Rochester to open and be priors of the religious house which ended up being a few blocks from where we lived in the Maplewood Neighborhood. David and Lin provided excellent leadership for the congregations involved in the Local Church Experiment n which we were involved. He was serious, single-minded, faithful, persistent and deliberate in his dedication to and carrying out the mission of the House. His attention was fully present with whomever he engaged in conversation and focused on what was possible. Second: David was a man of many gifts and talents. Post-Order, he and Lin returned to Iowa to his Loess Hills family homestead (filled with wonderful family antiques--including a player piano) which, with blood, sweat and tears, they rejuvenated and hosted with great hospitality as a Bed and Breakfast where we stayed during a trip to Ft. Mandan. David worked with the community on conservation efforts, and I believe (Jo or Lin correct me if this is incorrect) eventually turned part or all of this homestead into conservation land. Third: David's weeks' long bicycle trek with the 2015 cross country Climate March was incredible, overcoming obstacle after obstacle to meet the big demonstration in NYC and then on to Washington, DC the final destination. He was one of the oldest, if not the oldest, trekker in the group. We followed his daily blog and were amazed by his persistence, endurance, and determination to complete the trip, no matter what. Fourth: Even when his body was failing, he still kept up with list serve posts and wanted to make sure he received the Spong and later Progressive Spirituality and other articles, continuing his life-long journey of learning. As friends and colleagues, we give thanks for and celebrate David's unique and completed life and send our prayers to Lin, Heidi, and Jo and all his family. May his legacy of living into possibility continue through those whose life he touched. Grace and peace ~ Carleton and Ellie Stockcarletonstock(a)aol.com elliestock(a)aol.com

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7/02/20, Progressing Spirit; Fran Pratt: Even in 2020, Gratitude is my Religion; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 02 Jul '20

02 Jul '20

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#yiv4578070957templateHeader .yiv4578070957mcnTextContent p{font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv4578070957 #yiv4578070957templateBody .yiv4578070957mcnTextContent, #yiv4578070957 #yiv4578070957templateBody .yiv4578070957mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv4578070957 #yiv4578070957templateFooter .yiv4578070957mcnTextContent, #yiv4578070957 #yiv4578070957templateFooter .yiv4578070957mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Even in 2020, Gratitude is my Religion | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Fran Pratt July 2, 20202020 is proving to be a year of Apocalypse. A great unveiling of the reality of things. We are seeing things as they are, our illusions dissipated. The alarms that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color have been raising for over half a century, that we are not a post-racial society, that injustice is still normal, that inequality is still prevalent, that Black and Brown bodies are targeted, that systems of policing and incarceration are menaces to their communities - and so many more - are finally being heard by some. Their white siblings are waking up to these realities. I see many of my white siblings struggling to accept this reality, or refusing to outright. Because white people have lived in such cognitive dissonance for so long, being unwilling to recognize, much less lend their effort to, these systemic problems; many find themselves reeling from their awakening. We are also collectively reeling from the pandemic and its ongoing society, political, cultural, and economic effects. Communities of Color are affected more severely on all fronts. People are suffering, stir-crazy, angry, politically divided, and confused about how best to confront the challenges before us all; and experiencing all this with little leadership or guidance from top officials. We are muddling through; doing, I hope, our best to apply ourselves to the problems at hand with empathy and solidarity.It seems to me that, now, in the fourth month of the pandemic, we need to reach down deep for spiritual, emotional, and contemplative resources. The best one I know is gratitude. I have often said to my congregation, followers, and friends: Gratitude is Spirituality 101. Learn to practice gratitude so that we can pay attention to the world. We do this not to spiritually bypass; in fact, I believe, the practice of gratitude helps us to guard against spiritual bypassing, holding us accountable to reality and inviting us to sift through circumstances as they are so that we might accept them, love them, and find the lessons and opportunities for participation inside them. Gratitude is at once the most difficult of practices, and the most simple. Most people laugh a little when I mention it. They brush it off as simplistic and naive. “You must be looking through rose-colored glasses, Fran. You must be naturally optimistic…” I am not. I’m naturally bent toward cynicism and melancholy. In fact, I know that it can take a colossal effort of will to bring myself out of an energy of discouragement and hopelessness and into an energy of appreciation. It can take monumental strength. The effort is worth it. We practice gratitude so that we can engage with the stark reality of the world from a vantage point of Love. So, even in 2020, Gratitude is my Religion. I advocate for spiritual people to practice gratitude as a spiritual discipline, as a holy resistance, and as a compassionate engagement with and acceptance of the Now, the present moment, as it is, without excuses or equivocations. Spiritual Practice The spiritual practice of gratitude is not an empty-headed “good vibes only” stance. No. It is a daily challenge to courageously forge into the Now in search of the Divine. It is a daily call to curiosity. What could I possibly find to appreciate or offer thanks for in this midst of what, on any given day, might be a terrible reality? I’m not advocating for wide-eyed optimism. I’m advocating that we intentionally practice a deep, spiritual, grounded faith that begins in the most lowly place: gratitude for our existence, and the land we live on. As our Indigenous siblings teach us, we begin: “We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life” (1). And as our Christian sacred texts teach us, we begin: “I thank and praise you, God of my ancestors…” (Daniel 2:23). Because of this I regularly advocate that people who want to deepen their spirituality begin with gratitude. I encourage folks to write morning gratitude lists, similar to the gratitude journals spoken of by teachers of many stripes, from Oprah to Julian of Norwich (and many others). This point of pen on paper can be a powerful transformative force in our lives; we begin from a posture of thankfulness for blessing - whatever blessing we can scrounge up amidst whatever life situations we experience. Our connection to Divine Love and self-knowledge can start here, and it is a long-term pathway to spiritual growth and maturity. It was Julian who said, “Gratitude is a true understanding of who we really are.” And when we learn the truth of ourselves in relation to the Divine and recognize the Divine Within, we become more spiritually awake. Holy Resistance We touch the “Greening Force... enfolded in the weaving of Divine mysteries” (2), of which mystics like Hildegard of Bingen so eloquently write, by way of our attention and gratitude practice. This baseline gratitude then blossoms and branches out to foster other virtues in us: empathy, compassion, right action, holy rage toward injustice, and joy. In the words of WWII martyr and nazi-resistor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.” Grateful people have more access to joy. And the feeling of joy is a sacred resistance of evil and of the forces of the world that would have us inattentive and morose, unresistant to their agendas. As the author and activist Adrienne Maree Brown writes, “Feeling good is not frivolous, it is freedom.” (3) Fostering within ourselves a deep gratitude that leads to joy is a sacred liberating lifeforce. By our attention to the Divine, and our humble posture of gratitude at receiving, we resist empire. We resist colonizing forces that hierarchize and find inner freedom. We resist the sirens of Capitalism insisting that we must acquire and hoard. Because gratitude practice draws our attention to the abundance around us, it leads us away from a scarcity mindset. Instead of focusing on what we lack, we foster contentment that frees us to enjoy what we have. In this we also resist our own human temptation to feel entitled. We resist whiteness’ cultural imperative to own - to control, appropriate, amass. Instead of ownership, we are free to practice appreciation, and to hold every gift we encounter with an open handed lightness. Instead of a compulsion to get and keep, gratitude invites us to behold. Compassionate Engagement Gratitude practice teaches us and develops our strength in compassionate engagement; in loving the world as it is, in accepting reality and being willing to wade into it with clarity of mind, in search of the Divine movement inside it. When we can come at the world from a perspective of appreciation we allow ourselves the opportunity to love the world in the midst of its chaos. This trains our brains, digging synaptic pathways of gratitude that we can cultivate on easier days, and can rely upon in more difficult ones. Gratitude prepares our neural pathways in ways that make us more resilient, less easily traumatized, more easily bent but not broken, and more strategically present (5). Grateful people are better able to enter into seemingly hopeless situations, bringing help, practical solutions and clear thought. In the words of Nelson Mandela, “The time is always ripe to do right.” And we are better able to see the ripeness of the time because we have learned to pay attention and practice thankfulness. In this way we increase our ability to be responsive to a circumstance, rather than reactive. I believe that grateful people change the world by means of their gratitude, and by the virtuous action gratitude gives way to over time; they see the world from Love’s perspective, and thus can love it into wholeness. We echo the words and example of Christ In giving thanks and practicing thanksgiving, we follow the example and words of Christ as recorded in the Gospels: … “He took the cup, and when he had given thanks…” (Luke 22) … “Father, I thank you that you have heard me…” (John 11) … “I thank you,... Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children…” (Matthew 11) … “[Jesus] took the seven loaves and the fish, and He gave thanks, broke them, and kept on giving them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds…” (Matthew 15) We know that prayer and contemplation were foundational to Christ’s life and work on the earth; and I believe it's safe to say that the intentional practice of gratitude was, and is, an essential fuel of his initiating and living out the Commonwealth of God here. Gratitude is a pathway into Christ-consciousness. This simple, humble practice that grounds us in the knowledge that everything we have, we have received. Every work or movement toward justice that we participate in was begun before us. Every breath we take, molecule we drink, morsel we eat is supplied by the Divine. When gratitude fuels us we are able to see and appreciate the world, to love it, and to work for its good in this moment of desperate need.~ Rev. Fran Pratt Read online here About the Author Rev. Fran Pratt is a pastor, writer, musician, and mystic. Making meaningful and beautiful liturgy to be spoken, practiced, and sung, is at the heart of her creative drive. Fran authored a book of congregational litanies, and regularly creates and shares modern liturgy on her website and Patreon. Her prayers are prayed in churches of various sizes and traditions across the globe. She writes, speaks, and consults on melding ancient and new liturgical streams in faith and worship. Fran is Pastor of Worship and Liturgy at Peace of Christ Church in Round Rock, Texas.___________________1. https://www.firstpeople.us/html/A-Haudenosaunee-Thanksgiving-Prayer.html2. —Hildegard von Bingen, Causae et Curae3. Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good4. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_can_help_you_th… | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Gerwyn In looking at how the Jews see the Adam and Eve story – that it was a story of taking responsibility and moving out of innocence etc. How does this reconcile however with Paul ( a Jew) in Romans Ch5 where he appears to take on a more traditional even literal approach with Adam and Sin entering in , The Fall etc. ? A: By Carl Krieg Dear Gerwyn,Your question is whether Paul was a literalist, and to answer that it helps to unpack the various dimensions involved. First, we can ask what the author of the Yahwist narrative in Genesis had in mind. Did that person intend that the story be taken literally, and if not, what does it mean? Second, what did Paul have in mind when he used this story? What was he trying to show? And thirdly, are we obligated to agree with the Yahwist and/or Paul as we seek to understand who we are and who God is? Let’s start with the last question. The focal point of the Christian life is Jesus of Nazareth, who he was, what he taught, what he did, and how we today walk in that path. What the Yahwist thought millennia ago may be helpful in that enterprise and what Paul thought also may be helpful. Whether or not Paul was a literalist is set within the context of whether we are literalists, and if not, can we disagree with Paul, whatever he says? Put otherwise, is the Bible the absolutely inerrant and authoritative word of God? Historically, we should note that this concept of biblical inerrancy initially arose after the Reformation in the period known as Protestant Orthodoxy, and was a factor in the Thirty Years war, in which about 8 million died. I’m not sure what Paul had in mind in Romans chapter 5. In fact, I have always found much of Romans confusing. But the larger question is whether or not Paul, whatever he had in mind, could have been misguided or wrong. Although fundamentalists would howl and scream, any open-minded Christian today has to be open to that possibility. Lots of liberal church members feel as though they have to “struggle” with the meaning of many biblical verses that seem to support anachronistic perspectives. Personally, I have given up on struggling to reconcile certain biblical verses with Jesus-discipleship, and simply assume that different people at different times dealt with different issues from a different perspective. Just because someone or some group along the trajectory of church history placed those writings in “the book”, does not give them absolute authority. Just because the First Letter of Timothy prescribes that wives should be subject to their husbands does not require that we should accept that as God’s will. The same holds true for Paul. Just because his letters were so important in the development of the early church that they eventually assumed the authority of scripture, does not require us to accept his views as God’s will. Whether he was a literalist is not as important as whether we are literalists. Given that, it is nonetheless informative and helpful to try to understand what in fact Paul had in mind. I personally find it extremely improbable that Paul actually believed that the human race started with two people named Adam and Eve. Certainly he does believe, however, that human beings easily give in to a distortion of their humanity and that Jesus came to show us what it means to be truly human. Adam and Eve are symbolic of the problem, and set the stage for Jesus. That’s the second question. This brings us to the first: what was the Yahwist describing in that story about Eden? For a full analysis I refer you to my book, The Void and the Vision, and also an article in progressivechristianity.org entitled Eve, Adam, and Self-Transformation. The idea is simple. That which is forbidden is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a phrase that means the equivalent of top to bottom, left to right, in other words, everything. The pair are warned not to act as though they know everything and to assume that their view of the world coincides with what the world really is. But that, of course, is exactly what they do. They eat the fruit. They represent everyone. As we go through life, we each develop our own little “world”, inescapably and universally, and that parochial, egocentric perspective distorts our appreciation of and understanding of the real world and interferes with our ability to love our neighbor. In heart and conscience we all at some level are aware of this distortion, and by who he was and said and did Jesus casts God’s light into that self created world.~ Carl Krieg Read and share online here About the Author Dr. Carl Krieg received his BA from Dartmouth College, MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in NYC, and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of What to Believe? the Questions of Christian Faith, and The Void and the Vision. As professor and pastor, Dr. Krieg has taught innumerable classes and led many discussion groups. He lives with his wife, Margaret, in Norwich, VT. | | | | | | | | 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 Study of Life, Part 6: Rethinking Basic Christian Concepts in the Light of Charles Darwin Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong September 3, 2009As I retraced Charles Darwin’s steps through the Galapagos Islands, I contemplated anew his impact on traditional Christian thinking. I had been working intensively on Darwin for about three years in preparation for my book on eternal life. Darwin, more than anyone else, had shaken the foundations of belief in eternal life by defining human beings as animals with more highly developed brains, removing any sense of immortality from them. By the time we arrived in the Galapagos the time for any rewrites on this book was over. My manuscript was at my publisher, HarperCollins. The next time I will see this book will be in its published form. This book had been for me a grueling task since it drove me almost against my will to come to a new understanding of my faith. I discovered first that I could no longer make a case for life after death until I had journeyed to a place that was, as my subtitle suggests, “beyond religion, beyond theism and beyond heaven and hell.” That was a direct result of my deep engagement with Darwin’s thought. It is fair to say, however, that in the writing of this book I also became aware that Darwin’s thought had also helped me to arrive at a new vision of what I believe will be the future of Christianity. Through this column I seek to share that process with my readers. My struggle began with the recognition that the primary titles that we Christians have given to Jesus all carry with them a particular definition of what it means to be human. To call Jesus “savior” implies that human life needs to be saved from something. The same is true about the titles “rescuer,” “redeemer” and “reconciler.” This negative definition of humanity is why the traditional telling of the Jesus story focuses on Jesus’ suffering, which was the price that Jesus had to pay for our salvation. The traditional Protestant mantra, “Jesus died for my sins,” and the Catholic definition of the Eucharist as “the sacrifice of the Mass,” both reinforce the assumption of human depravity that is a major theme filling Christian theology and history. These distorting images began in a mythology that assumed that human life was a special creation, made in the image of God, and suggesting that human life originally shared in the perfection of God’s finished creation. Falling from that status into what came to be called “original sin,” however, quickly became the major focus of Christian theology. Starting with Paul, it has been the “fall” and its resulting distortion of God’s creation that has been the bedrock of the way we have told the Jesus story. It was our sinful status that mandated God’s divine rescue operation “for us and for our salvation.” The heart of Christian theology, including such core doctrines as the Incarnation, the divinity of Christ, the Atonement and even the concept of God as a Holy Trinity, were all attempts to spell out the Jesus story in terms of this definition of what it means to be sinful. Human beings were those creatures who in an act of disobedience had destroyed the beauty of God’s original creation and had plunged the whole world into sin. Charles Darwin’s understanding of human origins ran directly counter to these assumptions. If Darwin was correct then this whole theological system, which featured the account of Jesus’ sacrificial death to save us from our sins, was doomed to become inoperative. If human life, as Darwin suggested and as modern science keeps verifying, is the product of millions of years of evolutionary history, then none of these theological formulas remain valid. Without an original, perfect and complete creation, there could never have been a fall from perfection, not even metaphorically. Original sin has thus got to go. Without that fall from perfection there was no need for God’s rescue and no reason for Jesus to come to our aid. The idea of God as the punishing parent organizes religious life on the basis of the childlike and primitive motifs of reward and punishment. The cross understood as the place where Jesus paid our debt to this vengeful God becomes not just nonsensical, but it also serves to twist human life with guilt in order to make this system of thought believable. That is why Christian worship seems to require the constant denigration of human life. Christian liturgies constantly beg God “to have mercy.” Our hymns sing of God’s amazing grace, but the only reason God’s grace is amazing is that it “saved a wretch like me.” This theology assumes that God is an external being, living somewhere above the sky, whose chief occupations are two: first to keep the record books up to date on our behavior, thus serving as the basis on which we will be judged; and second to be ready to come to our aid in miraculous ways either to establish the divine order or in answer to our prayers. Darwin was only one part of the explosion of knowledge that rendered these ideas not only irrelevant, but unbelievable. Copernicus and Galileo had destroyed God’s dwelling place above the sky by introducing us to the vastness of space, suddenly but not coincidentally rendering this God homeless. Then Isaac Newton discovered the mathematically precise and immutable laws by which the universe is governed, leaving little room in it for either miracle or magic, which rendered the miracle-working deity unemployed. One well-known English theologian, when he finally embraced these realities in the early 1980’s, abandoned his Christian faith, pronouncing himself “a non-aggressive atheist.” When asked why he was no longer a believer, he replied quite simply “because God no longer had any work to do.” It was Darwin, however, who applied the coup de grâce both to religion and to the belief in life after death, at least as traditional Christianity had proclaimed these things. To Darwin human beings were merely a work in progress. Far from being created perfect we had evolved into our present form like every other creature by “natural selection” over more than three billion years. Salvation built on the three premises of a perfect creation, a fall into sin and a rescue from above that was achieved on the cross became an exercise in fantasyland. Indeed the story of the sacrificial death of Jesus by crucifixion began to look bizarre. This theology made God appear to be a deity who required a blood offering and a human sacrifice in order to forgive. Jesus began to look like a perpetual victim, perhaps even a masochistic person who willingly endured, even welcomed, suffering and death on the cross. Human beings looked like guilt-ridden creatures whose sinfulness made the death of Jesus necessary. Finally, Christianity became a religion of guilt, which was encouraged liturgically. There was nothing about this scenario that could be called good news or “gospel,” yet it persisted for centuries. These distortions in the Jesus message began to wobble under the impact of Galileo and Newton, but it was Darwin who made it clear that the Christian world could no longer go on pretending that nothing had changed. The foundations on which the Christian message had been erected had collapsed. When I embraced what this meant existentially I came to the conclusion that if Christianity was to have a future, then I must find a new point of entry and a new way to hear and to believe the Jesus story. That was the challenge I had to meet before I could ever address the possibility of life after death. I began that reconstruction task in my book Jesus for the Non-Religious and now I had to complete this task by spelling out a new way to view eternal life. I was delighted to discover that the greatest of the New Testament scholars in the 20th century, Rudolf Bultmann, regularly spoke of Jesus not as the “savior,” but as the “revealer.” That shift was not subtle. Bultmann was suggesting the Jesus “revealed” a new dimension of what it means to be human and in the process opened a new window into what it is to experience the presence of God. Suddenly I had found a whole new way to look at what divinity is in human life. Underneath the focus on sacrifice revealed in the gospels I began to view Jesus as one who was so deeply and fully human that whatever it is that we experience God to be could be seen in him and experienced through him. A new way to view the cross next began to come into view. The cross was not a sacrifice to placate an angry God, but a living portrait of a human life that was no longer controlled by the innate drive to survive. Here was a life free to give itself away, a life with no need to build itself up at another’s expense. This was a new dimension of what it means to be human, what it means to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that life was meant to be. When I got beneath the level of later explanation, which dominates the gospel narratives, and began to ask what was the Jesus experience that compelled his followers to stretch the words available to them to an infinite degree to enable those words to be big enough to capture their Jesus experience, I heard them saying we have met and encountered in the life of this Jesus everything that we mean by the word “God.” It was that word “inflation” that gives us virgin births, wandering stars, miracles, parables, physical resuscitations and ascensions into heaven. They were trying to say that in his humanity, which seemed to break all human barriers, they had found a doorway into the meaning of transcendence, the reality of God. The way into divinity became for me the pathway of becoming fully human. It was to affirm that we are still evolving into we know not what. Jesus was a new dimension of life for which we may all be headed. So I had to begin my quest for life after death by going into the depths of the mystery of life itself. Just as we now know that life evolved out of lifeless matter, that consciousness emerged out of life and finally that self-conscious life has emerged out of mere consciousness, so perhaps the day is now arriving when we will experience the possibility of entering a universal consciousness that is beginning to emerge out of self-consciousness. We are thus part of the oneness of life, bound together by a common DNA and that oneness makes us part of God. It also suggests that we are linked to eternity since God is found at the depth of the human. These words can only scratch the surface of the thought I try to develop in my book on eternal life, but they do presage the path I walk. Charles Darwin, who for me made a new Christianity necessary, turns out to offer the clue to that new direction. This vision now stands before me. I invite you to join me in entering it. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Revelations of 12 Master Artists How do an artist’s paintings speak to our perceptions of self, beauty, vision, and meaning? Roger Housden offers a 12-session course starting July 6th on self-revelation through the works of 12 different artists. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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