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September 2020
- 12 participants
- 12 discussions
Dear Bill and Rebecca,
I have such fond memories of working with Nan.
An early experience a few weeks after arriving in Chicago was that I was assigned to work with the kids for the weekend and I was given the 'theme' of the weekend.Since no one gave me the curriculum, I created my own in great detail.So, Nan, stopped by and was surprised that I was not using the curriculum that was already created!But when I showed her mine, she was delighted.Always the dedicated pedagogue, I admired Nan (and Bill) throughout my time in the Order.
May your memories of her enthusiasm and love give you solace,
Love,
Cynthia VanceVenice, Florida
facilitationfla(a)aol.com941-483-9165
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dialogue
https://bit.ly/30d5vS3
Like Twitter, Jumbo can delete your Google search history. You can select to delete all of it, or any searches that are older than a day, a week, or a month (from when you trigger the app’s cleaning feature). As for Amazon’s Alexa, Jumbo takes the direct approach: enable the feature, launch a cleaning, and all of your Alexa voice recordings will be scrubbed from the Amazon’s servers (one hopes).
The first section in Without My Consent’s Something Can Be Done! guide involves compiling and preserving evidence. This includes: 1) date of occurrence, 2) what happened, 3) evidence that it happened, 4) who you think did it, 5) evidence that they did it, and 6) evidence you still need and information on who might have it. Include screen shots of web pages that include visible URLs, printouts, text messages that show names and specific dates and times, PDFs, voicemails, and anything else that you’d be comfortable swearing on under oath in a court of law, should it come to that. Make copies of everything. There’s even a handy sample checklist you can download as a Word doc.
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Hi Folks,
On some calendars, today is Native American Day, although others/months have also been designated by various groups.
Below is a link to a song based on a Navajo Prayer from the Night Chant.
Below that, a prayer to the four directions.
Peace and blessings ~
Ellie :) elliestock(a)aol.com
Now I Walk In Beauty (Navajo Prayer) arr. by ... - YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGXI93Z6ieM Now I Walk In Beauty ... Play now; Mix - Now I Walk In Beauty ... Jane Valencia - Celtic harp & song - "I Walk In Beauty" ...
Prayer to TheFour Directions by Chief Seattle Great Spiritof Light, come to me out of the East (red) with the power of the rising sun.Let there be light in my words, let there be light on my path that I walk. Letme remember always that you give the gift of a new day. And never let me beburdened with sorrow by not starting over again. Great Spiritof Love, come to me with the power of the North (white). Make me courageouswhen the cold wind falls upon me. Give me strength and endurance for everythingthat is harsh, everything that hurts, everything that makes me squint. Let memove through life ready to take what comes from the north. GreatLife-Giving Spirit, I face the West (black), the direction of sundown. Let meremember every day that the moment will come when my sun will go down. Neverlet me forget that I must fade into you. Give me a beautiful color, give me agreat sky for setting, so that when it is my time to meet you, I can come withglory. Great Spiritof Creation, send me the warm and soothing winds from the South (yellow).Comfort me and caress me when I am tired and cold. Unfold me like the gentlebreezes that unfold the leaves on the trees. As you give to all the earth yourwarm, moving wind, give to me, so that I may grow close to you in warmth. Mandid not create the web of life, he is but a strand in it. Whatever man does tothe web, he does to himself.
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9/24/20, Progressing Spirit, David Felton: Confronting Politicus Distractus; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 24 Sep '20
by Ellie Stock 24 Sep '20
24 Sep '20
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“Confronting Politicus Distractus”
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| Essay by Rev. David M. Felten
September 24, 2020Recently, a half-dozen young people in our small town organized a peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstration. The march was seen by some as an intrusion of threatening other-worldly politics into our predominantly (99.8%) white town and riled up a lot of emotional responses on social media. Trying to cool some of the heated exchanges on Facebook, a well-meaning former mayor and local business leader offered an olive branch comment to try to dial down the vitriol. He ended with invoking “God” as being more important than “politics”. This is what he wrote:
“Politics is not as important as we think or as we make it. So many things are more important than politics, but some receive less of our attention. I likely forgot many others, but the top ten things that are more important than politics are:
10. Volunteers
9. Military men & women
8. First responders
7. Business owners
6. Teachers
5. Co-workers
4. Neighbors
3. Friends
2. Family
1. God
Politics is around item #37 in order of importance. We are losing our minds and being played.”
At first I wanted to call it shallow and syrupy misdirection, but decided that was too kind. In truth, this is the worst kind of cloying codswallop. And not wanting to disparage my neighbor, let me speak in the broadest possible generalities. A major characteristic of many a conservative politician of the genus politicus distractus is their absolute dedication to the idea that government is bad and politics is its obnoxious offspring – all the while using both government AND politics to their own benefit and the advantage of their cronies and supporters.
And the trick used to keep low-information voters and otherwise well-meaning citizens in the dark? Shroud their contempt for government and the good that it can do in saccharine tributes to God, “country,” and those who actually do good in our communities (often as employees of, uhhh, the government!).
In the interest of maintaining some semblance of civility, I resisted the urge to respond publicly on Facebook. However, I couldn’t NOT respond. So, below is the response I would have liked to have posted, but didn’t. Let’s just keep this between you and me, OK?
Dear Karl (not his real name…),
“Politics” is item #37? Not as important as we think? Coming from a person who has been immersed in both church and town politics, this claim surprises me. It reflects either a profound naïveté or willful ignorance – neither of which look good on you.
First off, you’ve got to know that “politics” is not a matter that can be isolated in its own hermetically sealed environment. Do you mean “partisan” politics? Even so, your opening statement is patently false. Partisan politics have seldom been more important than they are right now – especially when many in one party seem to have sold themselves out to the unpredictable leadership of an amoral, self-absorbed authoritarian.
Plus, the root word of “politics” is the Greek word for city (polis) and includes activities and relationships that govern our personal, civic and other institutions. As such, every item on your top ten list is inseparable from and positively rife with “politics.”
As a rule, volunteers (only #10?) give of their time and resources to organizations and causes with which they feel solidarity. Their decision is political. Military men & women pledge their allegiance to following orders — whether they agree with them or not — that uphold the political agenda of those up the chain of command. First responders put their lives on the line every day with the expectation that they will protect, serve, and rescue without regard for the ethnicity, gender, creed, socioeconomic status — or politics — of those whom they interact with. And when they fail to uphold this trust, political (and criminal) consequences should be expected, not surprising.
Business owners swim in a sea of political relationships, be they with the government that regulates and taxes them to the clients with whom they interact to the religious sensibilities they claim. Remember Hobby Lobby’s hypocritical argument against the Affordable Care Act? The ACA mandated that employee’s contraceptives be covered by insurance and the über-Christian owners of Hobby Lobby objected. They literally made a federal case out of it (which Hobby Lobby won in the Supreme Court[1]) while at the same time investing in pharmaceutical companies that manufacture abortion and contraception products.[2]
And if teachers are so dang important (#6!), why do we continue to tolerate public education being crippled by proponents of for-profit schools? Teachers here in Arizona are among the lowest paid in the nation. You’ve got to know that the undermining of public education is a long-term scheme of those seeking to benefit themselves while maintaining racial, social, and economic divisions in our culture. As a person of faith, one would hope that you would choose to be a part of fashioning a political environment that promoted robust public education for everyone, including the downtrodden and disadvantaged in our society — not dismantling it in order to funnel more and more resources to the already well-off. Along with race, coronavirus, and the economy in general, there are few areas that are more important right now than funding our schools and paying our education professionals a wage that reflects their impact on our society. These are all deeply political issues. To separate out “supporting our teachers” from the systemic change that is necessary to actually pay our teachers is the worst kind of political bait and switch.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Co-workers, neighbors, friends, and family are all important. But to delude oneself into thinking that these relationships are free from the influence of “politics” is, as I’ve already said, reflective of a profound naïveté or downright willful ignorance. You don’t need me to tell you that our interactions with these most intimate of connections can generate the most painful, joyful, and consequential moments in life.
And then there’s God (who I’m confident is reassured to be at the top of your list). But I do kinda wonder if God wonders what being “#1” in importance actually means. Especially in light of how superficial your whole top ten list seems to be. If your means of “knowing” God is based in the Bible, then I’m at a loss as to how you’ve missed the deeply political agenda of the Bible’s stories, poetry, and laws — let alone the political intrigues and back-room deals that played a part in assembling the Bible in the first place. Likewise, if your means of “knowing” God is based on personal experience, what do you tell yourself about this God who has so blessed you as a white, male, Republican, Christian American while at the same time seeming to have abandoned an indigenous little Christian girl orphaned by gang violence in Guatemala?
Look, your claim that “Politics is around item #37 in order of importance” is a clear indication of your having been compromised by American civil religion, where one’s faith practice is isolated in a phantasmagorical bubble of self-serving individualism. Never mind climate change or systemic racism. They’re just so much “politics,” right? Back in the reality-based world, people for whom faith is a contributing factor to their interaction with others see politics as a means to an end. We take action to change the world — but do so strategically. Jesus knew enough to not overturn the tables in the Temple until the very end (at least in Mark, Matthew, and Luke) — because he knew such an overt political act would mean swift retribution from both political and religious authorities (and President Trump would likely tweet about him being a “lawless anarchist destroying and desecrating property”).
>From 19th century abolitionists to 20th century suffragettes and civil rights protesters to 21st century proponents of Black Lives Matter, people of faith have leveraged politics to make changes to our system. Dr. King set before us the goal of the Beloved Community, where the triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism are confronted and overcome through nonviolent political action. The young women who organized and led our Black Lives Matter march embodied the very best of what politics can do: empowering people to visualize and work towards a more just and peaceful world. To relegate “politics” to the bottom of some priority list not only dishonors their efforts but reveals a failure to grasp the vital role of politics in every aspect of life.
When you say, “We are losing our minds and being played,” I have to assume you’re speaking for yourself. Those of us who try to keep at least one foot grounded in reality know — along with Jesus, Anna Howard Shaw, Vernon Johns, Dorothy Day, and John Lewis — that “politics” is at the heart of how we make the world a better place. And I have it on good authority that even ol’ #1 agrees. ~ Rev. David M. Felten
Read online here
About the Author
Rev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions”. A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet.
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2014/04/01/hobby-lobby-401k-discover… |
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Question & Answer
Q: By Susan
As an active UCC member, I was looking forward to reading Dr. Dorhauer’s response. I came away disappointed, however. Though I agree that certainly there are sociological reasons for it (as alluded to at the end), I believe black-on-black crime is a legitimate problem. I was troubled by the suggestion that to even ask the question or use the phrase is racist and meant to perpetuate the larger narrative of “the black man as a savage beast” (which leads to “shoot-to-kill” justification). Since I am originally from Chicago, I regularly see items about all the shootings, etc. I wince when people say that “they seem to be killing each other” because I think it hurts the Black Lives Matter cause. Citing the statistic that “the offender in a violent crime was of the same race as the victim in 70% of violent incidents involving black victims and 62% of incidents involving whites” is really useless (and probably misleading – a red herring?) unless we know the number of crimes for each category. I don’t think it’s racist to believe the number is higher among blacks. I’d be happy to be shown that I am wrong about this. I DO realize that the problem of racial profiling is real, but I don’t think the perception that “they are killing each other (too)” should be dismissed as racist.
A: By Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer Dear Susan,First, let me thank the reader for the question. It is an important one, and affords me an opportunity to be a little more clear about some things.
First, the question about ‘black on black’ crime is not, on its face, racist. There are, as you suggest, legitimate questions to resolve about this phenomenon. I do want to say two things about those legitimate questions.
One: As a white man with a degree in divinity studies, I am not the one who needs to answer them.
Second: Sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, economists, and others have looked into this. As long as they claim to know and understand fully the cultural context of black communities in America, it is they whose writings should be consulted here. The full examination of the pressures put on black citizens in a systemically racist culture that produces micro-aggressions, mass incarceration, unfair distribution of and access to wealth and education must be conducted to get at the root of this.
What is racist is the application by whites of the question ‘what about black on black crime’ as a way of deflecting attention from the abuse of power and authority by white cops who racially profile black suspects. When black and brown bodies pile up under conditions that clearly demonstrate that many white police officers carry an already inherent predisposition to fear those black bodies, it is racist to avoid looking into that phenomenon by simply asking “well, what about black on black crime.”
Additionally, most crime is committed within a short radius of one’s home – and that is why most crimes are same-race crimes. Therefore, I suggest, it is, in fact, racist when a white person asks “what about black on black crime” without then having a simultaneous curiosity about white on white crime – which is just as statistically probable.~ Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer
Read and share online here
About the Author
Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer was granted a Doctoral Degree in White Privilege Studies in 2007 from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, OH. He also has degrees in Theology and Philosophy. He is the author of two published books, Beyond Resistance: the Institutional Church Meets the Postmodern World and Steeplejacking: How the Christian Right Hijacked Mainstream Religion. He is a recipient of Eden Seminary's "Shalom Award," given by the student body for a lifetime of committed work for peace and justice. John was ordained as a Christian minister in 1988. He currently serves as the 9th General Minister of the United Church of Christ, one of the USA's most progressive faiths, whose vision is "A Just World for All." He is a frequent speaker on the subject of white privilege, and is especially committed to engaging white audiences to come to deeper understandings of the privilege. He is particularly interested in how whites manifest privilege every day and how it impacts people of color, two things whites remain largely either ignorant of or in denial about. |
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Origins of the New Testament, Part IX:
Paul on the Final Events in Jesus' Life
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
December 17, 2009
“I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received.” With those words Paul set out in writing to the Corinthians the earliest account we have of the final events in the life of Jesus. Paul was not an eyewitness to these final events, since as far as we know he never met or confronted the Jesus of history.
Nevertheless, he presents himself in this epistle as the protector of and the conduit through which the critical events in Jesus’ life are passed on to another generation. This is, he was asserting, the core and the crux of our faith story. It is therefore of “first importance.” Where did Paul receive this tradition? The best guess is informed by his words in the epistle to the Galatians written two to four years earlier. There Paul gives us the only firsthand account that we have of his conversion. It is not, however, the conversion story with which most people are familiar. It does not feature a journey to Damascus with orders from the Chief Priest to bring back in bondage any “followers of the Way,” which was the title first used to designate the disciples of Jesus. Paul never mentions a bright light from heaven, or a voice, assumed to belong to Jesus, asking him why he was persecuting Jesus. Paul makes no mention of ever having been temporarily blind and shares no account of his baptism at the house at which time he recovered his sight. That “Damascus Road” story of which these familiar details are a part was the product of Luke’s pen when he authored the book of Acts, a work that was not written until the middle years of the 9th decade, or some thirty years after Paul’s death. Paul was not around to defend himself against the mythmakers. There is no mention in the authentic works of Paul that he might ever have had a dramatic experience on the Road to Damascus or that a man named Ananias might have played a significant role in that conversion. The book of Acts alone suggests that Ananias actually served as Paul’s “midwife” in his birth as a Christian.
Most biblical scholars simply dismiss the historicity of this Acts account, yet they do not dismiss the historicity of Paul’s conversion. The reason for that is that Paul tells us himself: “I persecuted the Church of God violently and tried to destroy it.” He claims to have advanced dramatically in “the tradition of my Fathers, until God called me through his grace and was pleased to reveal his Son to me in order that I might preach among the Gentiles.” Paul himself gives us no other details of his conversion. He does, however, and in a rather full way, relate his activities following this life-altering moment. “I did not confer with flesh and blood,” he says, “I did not go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.” Instead, he says, “I went away into Arabia and again I returned to Damascus.”
Continuing his chronicle of that time, he says, “After three years, I went up to Jerusalem. His purpose, he said, was to visit Cephas, which was Simon’s nickname. Simon was called “the rock.” In Greek the word for rock was “petros,” while in Aramaic the word for rock was “kepha.” So Simon is best known in the Bible for his nicknames, Peter in Greek and Cephas in Aramaic. Both meant something close to our word “Rocky” today. In those 15 days with Cephas Paul must have heard for the first time the details of the life of Jesus in their earliest and most primitive form. This meeting with Peter would have come no earlier than four and no later than nine years after the crucifixion. So in these words of Paul we have gotten back to the first decade of Christian memory and have touched primitive Christianity. Jesus is clearly a person of history not a mythological creation.
It is fascinating to note what Paul actually says and perhaps even more to note what he does not say about the death of Jesus. He covers the cross in just ten literal words: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” Elsewhere in Paul’s writing he refers to the cross and to Jesus as the crucified one, so I think it is fair to say that Paul knew that Jesus had died at the hands of the Romans by means of crucifixion. Paul has also begun to interpret the meaning of that death. It was “for our sins,” he asserted. That phrase, which was destined to form a major building block in the much later theologies of the atonement, appears to have been lifted by Paul out of the Synagogue’s liturgy of Yom Kippur, in which the “innocent lamb of God” was slain as an atonement offering for the sins of the people.
Paul adds further that this death of Jesus was “in accordance with the scriptures.” The two places in the scriptures to which Paul might have been alluding were the “servant” passages of Isaiah 40-55, in which the servant absorbed the pain and hostility of the world and returned it as love; or perhaps to II Zechariah (9-14), in which the shepherd king of the Jews was betrayed into the hands of those who bought and sold animals in the Temple for thirty pieces of silver. Within the first decade of Christian history, we can safely assume that these two passages in the Hebrew Bible had become incorporated into the disciples’ understanding of Jesus. Please note also that Paul seems to know nothing of the later developing narratives that purport to tell the details of the crucifixion. There is for Paul no betrayal by Judas, no prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, no arrest, no trial, no Pilate, no Barabbas, no denial by Peter, no torture by the Romans, no purple robe or crown of thorns, no Simon of Cyrene to carry his cross, no one crucified with him, no words spoken from the cross, no expression of separation from God, no cry of thirst and no darkness at noon. All of those things appear to be later developing details that simply are not part of what was handed to Paul as being of “first importance.”
Then Paul moves on to look at the rest of the final events in the life of Jesus. After he died, says Paul, “he was buried.” Again no details are given. Paul appears not to know anything about the tomb in which Jesus was laid or the spices that were used in the burial. He certainly appears to know nothing of a man named Joseph of Arimathea, who comes into the tradition much later as the architect of the burial. Again most scholars today regard the familiar burial stories of the gospels as late developing traditions. Paul probably does not include any reference to these things because these traditions had not yet been developed or even born.
Paul then moves to the crux of the Christian claim: Jesus, he says, “was raised.” Paul always employs a passive verb to describe what came to be called Easter. Jesus never “rises” in Paul. God always “raises” him. Into what? That should be the question we ask. Did God raise him from death back into the life of this world? Was the body of Jesus physically resuscitated and thus enabled to walk out of the tomb? That has been the way many have incorrectly read Paul. That is, however, clearly not what Paul understood Easter to be. If resurrection was a resuscitation of a dead person back into the life of this physical world, then the raised person would inevitably have to die again at a later point in time. There is no other way to get out of this life. Paul will, however, write in another place these words: “Christ being raised from the dead dies no more. Death has no more dominion over him.” That does not sound like physical resuscitation back to the life of this world to me.
Paul adds to the resurrection account only two details. Whatever this raising was it occurred, he said, “on the third day” and it was, he repeats, “in accordance with the scriptures.” Was this reference to the “third day” a reference to physical time? Or had these words already become a symbol developed before Paul, but then adopted by Paul? When the early gospels were written, their authors were not sure whether this traditional and thus proper time measure was “after three days,” which is what Mark quotes Jesus as having said on three occasions, or “on the third day,” as both Matthew and Luke changed Mark to read. That would not be the same day. Either way, “on” or “after” the third day is hard to fix chronologically with the way the gospels tell the story. If the timeline of the gospels is followed literally Jesus dies at 3 p.m. in the afternoon and is buried by sundown or by 6 p.m. From sundown to midnight is six hours. From midnight on Friday to midnight on Saturday is twenty-four hours. From midnight to dawn or 6 a.m. on Sunday morning is six more hours. Put those time markers together and the best one can get is not three days, but thirty-six hours, which is only a day and a half. So how did we get to the concept of three days? That is some of the data that suggests that three days is a symbol and not a literal measure of time. If that is so then we need to wonder where it came from. Was it adapted from the three days it takes the moon to move into total darkness and then back to light as “the new moon?” “Three days” could possibly be a time measure like “forty days,” which the Jews used to mark revelatory moments in history. I think it is obvious that three days was for Paul a symbol and not a measure of “clock” or “calendar” time.
Then Paul gets to what he calls those to whom the raised Jesus was “made manifest,” or those to whom Jesus appeared. The Greek word that is translated “appeared” in this Corinthian text is the same word used by the translators of the Septuagint (a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek between the third and second centuries BCE) to describe how God “appeared” to Moses at the Burning Bush (see Exodus 3). Did Moses “see” God in a physical way? Could Moses have caught the likeness of God on his camera if he had had the ability to take pictures? Or was this a poetic description of a defining insight? Was it an example of what we would later call “insight” or “second sight?” The story is far more complex than most people think. Next week we will look at the list of names of those to whom Paul says the raised Christ appeared. The story then gets more intriguing, so stay tuned.~ John Shelby Spong |
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Announcements
Speaking Across Divides
This one-day retreat via Zoom is designed to give you the knowledge and tools to become a better, more confident communicator with people of differing opinions and experiences.
Join Spirituality & Practice on Saturday, September 26th to learn very practical time-tested tools for effective communication. This training is designed to help with two-party discussions, but the lessons learned can be applied when you are in larger groups as well. The day will alternate between large-group presentations and small-group breakout rooms for reflection and practice. READ ON ... |
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Just wondering what the front line news about the fires is from folks living in CA, WA, and OR. We're thinking about you, wondering how you are doing, and hoping you are staying safe. The news media accounts of neighborhoods destroyed and intense smoke air pollution is heart-rending.
Ellie Stockelliestock(a)aol.com
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9/17/20, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Dr. John Dorhauer: A White Man Makes the Case for Reparations, Part 2; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 17 Sep '20
by Ellie Stock 17 Sep '20
17 Sep '20
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A White Man Makes the Case for Reparations, Part 2
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| Essay by Rev. Dr. John Dorhauer
September 17, 2020“Wherefore, as best we can, we ask and require you that you consider what we have said to you, and that you take the time that shall be necessary to understand and deliberate upon it, and that you acknowledge the Church as the Ruler and Superior of the whole world, and the high priest called Pope, and in his name the King and Queen Doña Juana our lords, in his place, as superiors and lords and kings of these islands and this Tierra-firme.
If you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command.”
These words, written by both the Pontiff in Rome and the King of Spain and enforceable by their conquering armies, would be among the very first words spoken by European settlers to indigenous peoples in the New World.
They come from an official document that would have been carried by a conquering explorer to the Americas. The document was entitled The Requerimiento. It was an amalgamation of both religious and royal power that argued that from the time of Peter, God intended for the Church and its titular head, namely the Pope, to rule over the Earth, all lands and all peoples.
The document begins by stating that the Pope owns the land upon which the document is now being read. It tells of other lands newly conquered, and within them the conversion of inhabitants who were proselytized by Roman priests and who converted to Christianity. It says they willingly ceded control of those lands to the Pope and his designees, the King and Queen of Spain.
Having shared news of other lands and inhabitants acquiescing with immediacy, it demands that the peoples of this new land do the same. The words I quoted above come at the end of this document.
Imagine if you will a native people, having spent millennia in that place without encounters of any kind from European conquerors, one day seeing this new tribe. The complexion is odd. The language unrecognizable. And yet, in a language that sounded like gibberish, they would be told to convert “with immediacy”, cede ownership and control of the land to the rightful owner the Pope, or prepare to be at war with the church. This war would end up with the justifiable enslavement of all – including wives and children.
THAT is how white Europeans entered these shores.
When I write as a white man about calling for reparations, this is the source and origin of the damages for which we bear responsibility and for which we seek repair. The question I want to ask in this essay is this: how far removed from that source are we. Is it a distant relic of the past from which we are now utterly disconnected? Or is there a lingering thread through time that ties us intimately not only to its worldview but to the hubris and arrogance necessary to believe it is justifiable?
There has never been a time after we whites occupied these shores when both white religious authority and white political power failed to conspire to instantiate white power, white privilege, and white supremacy. Yes, there would be voices of resistance (even white ones) to this ideology from the start – but they would never be sufficient to slow its progress, much less end its power.
This second essay will use but a very few (of countless thousands) examples of how that ideology persists and evolves, taking ever new forms; how that ideology created not merely racism but systemic racism that eventually even white people lost the ability (and desire) to see or mitigate; and how those conditions undermine the argument that whites today do not benefit from nor are they responsible for the sins of the past.
This is a mere sampling of the moral and legal claims made by whites that began with first contact and continue to this day. Damage has been done. We whites today are both responsible for and beneficiaries of that damage; and the act of repairing that damage – of making reparations – falls to us. Why us? Because none before us has taken up the responsibility of repairing the damage. That repair is crucial to the emergence of equity, restoration, and reconciliation.
I can’t provide deep context for the documents or public statements I reference in this short essay. I will simply record them as given with minimal commentary and let them speak for themselves.
As you read this, ask yourself at what point in our history was fair distribution of wealth and power between the races actuated?
We have already seen the language of the Requerimiento – a legal and theological document that gave whites sole right to possess land and enslave anyone refusing to worship Jesus.
Let us move forward now through our history.
Louisiana revised their slave codes in 1852, and the new code included these provisions: “no slave can possess anything in his own right, or dispose in any way of the produce of his industry, without the consent of his master;” “slaves shall always be reputed and considered real estate;” “no slave shall be permitted to buy, sell, negotiate, trade or exchange any kind of goods or effects…under penalty of forfeiting the whole;” “all persons who shall teach, or permit or cause to be taught, any slave in this State to read or write, shall, on conviction,…be imprisoned.”
In 1705 Virginia passed a slave code establishing that any runaway slave could be dismembered.
>From the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court:
“In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants (italics added for emphasis), …were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.” A little further on: “The legislation of the different colonies furnishes positive and indisputable proof of this fact. It would be tedious, in this opinion, to enumerate the various laws they passed on this subject.”
I only cited two examples of such laws. Judge Taney wrote in his opinion to the court in this landmark case that they were too numerous to cite. Every one of those laws written by then two centuries before and since were sufficient to perpetuate white skin privilege by law and be upheld by the highest court in the land.
>From the Requerimiento to the colonies to the state constitutions to the Supreme Court, now over three hundred years of legal precedence conspired to deprive blacks of voting rights, property ownership, commerce, and education.
We continue with post-civil war rhetoric and legislation. Here we simply need to demonstrate that the Emancipation Proclamation did not change the economic outlook even if some of the laws were rewritten.
In 1901, political leaders from Alabama gathered for a Constitutional Convention of the State of Alabama. The Journal that recorded the proceedings notes the following argument put forth: “…there is no higher duty resting upon us…than that which requires us to embody in the fundamental law such provisions as will enable us to protect the sanctity of the ballot in every portion of the state.”
A voting rights act in 1965 attempted to end what had become rampant, overt and legal disenfranchisement of black voters. But since 1965 legal means like gerrymandering, closing polls or having fewer voting booths in heavily black districts, along with mass incarceration have rendered that bill useless.
And then there is this: “They want three and a half billion dollars, for the Post Office. Now they need that money to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these million and millions of ballots. But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.” This was spoken just days ago by the President of our country – an admission that he will choke the Postal Services of money needed to count and collect ballots cast during a global pandemic.
The continual and methodical subjugation of the black vote is a primary care and concern for white men in power. Black voters scare the hell out of white men in power. What Donald Trump said in his press conference about dismantling the Post Office is eerily reminiscent of the white Alabama politician saying “…there is no higher duty…. than to protect the sanctity of the ballot.”
Mr. Trump is only doing what white men have conspired to do for and with one another from the founding of this country.
Until 1968, white resistance to black empowerment included creating housing regulations that forbade or prohibited the sale of property to black families. The first known such covenant was written in Minneapolis in 1910 and read this way: “…the premises shall not at any time be conveyed, mortgaged or leased to any person or persons of Chinese, Japanese, Moorish, Turkish, Negro, Mongolian, of African blood or descent.” From there, one Henry Scott would become the president of the Seven Oaks Corp. in Minneapolis and would put that same language into thousands of deeds across the city.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 was an attempt to stop this discrimination. Housing discrimination was a means of prohibiting black laborers from accruing wealth over a lifetime commensurate with their sweat, talent, and abilities. It was legally enforced discrimination that had a profound effect on how wealth could be accrued and transferred to future generations.
After the act passed, it was proven to have very little effect. Very few violations were ever investigated and even fewer were prosecuted. In order to get enough votes to pass, the Dirksen amendment was written into the bill that greatly weakened the enforcement power of the federal government. Former HUD Secretary Patricia Harris once said of the Act that HUD was reduced to “asking the discovered lawbreaker whether he wants to discuss the matter.” (US Congress, 1978). Those who would successfully prove and prosecute wrongdoing could only be awarded $1,000 recompense for damages. By 1980, only five plaintiffs received awards in excess of $3,500.
There is a footnote to this. In July of 2012 the Federal Government reached settlement with Wells Fargo bank, forcing them to pay a penalty of $184.3 million in relief to homeowners to resolve fair lending claims. It was discovered that from 2004-2009 they practiced wholesale discrimination in lending practices involving black and Hispanic borrowers. Having been denied prime lending rates ONLY BECAUSE OF THEIR RACE (it was proven), when the market collapsed their homes were foreclosed on at rates much higher than their white counterparts. This was not the slave era, dear reader. This was ten years ago.
This has been anything but comprehensive. It is a mere tip of the iceberg in terms of legally defended and morally repulsive tactics used from the founding of this country to the present day to compromise the voting power and earning potential of black Americans by whites in power, who used that legally enforced discrimination to maintain control over wealth and its distribution.
The damage we are seeking to repair when we talk about white power, white privilege, and white supremacy isn’t just about slavery. Yes, slavery is a part of the legacy of forced disenfranchisement and legalized wealth disempowerment. But it didn’t begin with slavery and it didn’t end there. America has always let whites be educated differently, given whites unfair access to property, favored white voters, paid whites different salaries, while denying people of color access to education, depriving them of the right to vote, and writing laws that prevented them from their full earning potential and property ownership.
There is not a time in America when the actions of whites in power failed to compromise the earning power and potential of the black race.
Reparations are owed. Damage has been done and repairs need to be made.
If you are white in America today – you owe reparations. You have benefited from the system whether you actively constructed the system or not. In every election cycle, we whites have held fairly or unfairly a majority and ensured that the leaders we elect and the laws they write will fail to level the playing field. That is not an accident.
Reparations is not a question of if, but of how and when.
That is what I will talk about in my third installment of this series.~ Rev. Dr. John Dorhauer
Read online here
About the Author
Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer was granted a Doctoral Degree in White Privilege Studies in 2007 from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, OH. He also has degrees in Theology and Philosophy. He is the author of two published books, Beyond Resistance: the Institutional Church Meets the Postmodern World and Steeplejacking: How the Christian Right Hijacked Mainstream Religion. He is a recipient of Eden Seminary's "Shalom Award," given by the student body for a lifetime of committed work for peace and justice. John was ordained as a Christian minister in 1988. He currently serves as the 9th General Minister of the United Church of Christ, one of the USA's most progressive faiths, whose vision is "A Just World for All." He is a frequent speaker on the subject of white privilege, and is especially committed to engaging white audiences to come to deeper understandings of the privilege. He is particularly interested in how whites manifest privilege every day and how it impacts people of color, two things whites remain largely either ignorant of or in denial about. He has been devoted to his bride Mimi for over 36 years, and they have parented three children - a composer/musician, an author/painter, and a poet. John and Mimi have two grandchildren they dote on constantly. |
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Question & Answer
Q: By David
Does God have to heal all the people who ask me to pray for them?
A: By Rev. Lauren Van Ham
Dear David,If God were like us, with an ego, I would say, “God doesn’t have to do anything,” but this has not been my experience of God. In the world around me, I see God in the Life that is happening in you and in me, and in every living thing. Our creation is God, generating life and learning and possibility every single moment. Along the way, we get hurt, mistakes happen, events take place in ways we don’t like.
Prayers for healing are some of the best prayers we can pray. It is never wrong to pray for a miracle or for a cure, but prayers for healing create space for outcomes we might not be able to see initially. Healing is a space where any number of things may happen, and all of them are movements toward wholeness. I pray for the health and wholeness of all beings each time I remember to -- and especially when I am struggling with the enormity of injustice or heart-break or another hardship that feels so, so wrong.
When we pray for the healing of others (and for ourselves), we are asking for God – the source of unfathomable Love – to bring us into wholeness with that love. I don’t believe these prayers are ever “wasted,” because each one reminds us of our own intention to strive toward this sense of love and wholeness in our own life, and in our walk with others. I hope you will keep praying healing prayers, when you’re requested to do so. Life and Love are ancient and wise. In ways we understand, and in ways we do not, they are always conspiring to bring us into divine wholeness.~ Rev. Lauren Van Ham
Read and share online here
About the Author
Rev. Lauren Van Ham, MA was born and raised beneath the big sky of the Midwest, Lauren holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Naropa University and The Chaplaincy Institute. Following her ordination in 1999, Lauren served as an interfaith chaplain in both healthcare (adolescent psychiatry and palliative care), and corporate settings (organizational development and employee wellness). Lauren’s passion for spirituality, art and Earth's teachings have supported her specialization in eco-ministry, grief & loss, and sacred activism. Her essay, "Way of the Eco-Chaplain," appears in the collection, Ways of the Spirit: Voices of Women; and her work with Green Sangha is featured in Renewal, a documentary celebrating the efforts of religious environmental activists from diverse faith traditions across America. Her ideas can be heard on Vennly, an app that shares perspectives from spiritual and community leaders across different backgrounds and traditions. Currently, Lauren tends her private spiritual direction and eco-chaplaincy consulting practice; and serves as Climate Action Coordinator for the United Religions Initiative (URI), and as guest faculty for several schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. |
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| 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! |
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Origins of the New Testament, Part VIII:
The Corinthian Letters
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
December 10, 2009
Paul was a complicated mixture of many things. He was a missionary who traveled hundreds of miles by foot and by boat to tell his story. He was, as we noted last week when examining the letter to the Galatians, an intense zealot who would fight vigorously to defend his understanding of the gospel. He was a theologian who sought to put his experience of God into rational thought forms so that they could be passed on. Perhaps above all things, however, Paul was a pastor who sought to smooth out disputes, confront evil and ease hurt feelings in the congregations that he founded and served. When we examine his correspondence with the church in Corinth, it is this pastoral side that dominates. Even when he discusses issues like the resurrection, his discussion is pastorally oriented as he seeks to ease in the people of the Corinthian church their anxiety connected with mortality.
The first thing to note about the two Corinthian letters is that they appear to be composites of a more extensive correspondence that perhaps reached a total of four or even five Pauline letters. By a careful analysis of our two remaining epistles to the Corinthians, scholars have come to the conclusion that these “lost letters,” to which Paul actually refers in the epistles that we do have, have been included, at least in part, in what we call II Corinthians. These scholars point to such passages as II Cor.6:1-7:1, II Cor.10-13 and even in the extraneous verses in Cor.11:32-33 that appear to be inserts into the texts that actually break the flow of Paul’s argument. Despite this strange construction, however, scholars find no evidence to suggest that all of II Corinthians is the authentic work of Paul.
We need to remember that preserving letters in the first century was an inexact and costly procedure of hand copying, and that no one had yet assigned the status of “Holy Scripture” to the writings of Paul. Maybe that is why they preserved only what they believed was most important.
When we turn to the content of these two Corinthian epistles themselves, we find Paul, the pastor, dealing with human beings who are acting like human beings. Paul knows what every pastor knows, namely, that congregations are not made up of angels. At the same time congregations learn very quickly that ordination does not bestow perfection on their ordained leader. Pastoral care is the sensitive attempt to bring wholeness out of an exchange between human passion and human insecurity. It is a delicately nuanced balancing act, the job of which is to enhance the humanity of all who are involved. If we need a text to describe the goal of all pastoral activity, it would be the Fourth Gospel’s definition of Jesus’ purpose: “I have come,” John’s Jesus says, “that they might have life and have it abundantly.” That is finally both the mission of the Christian Church and the hoped-for outcome in every pastoral situation. Abundant life, please note, does not always mean happiness or even the easing of pain. Many people seek wholeness in quite destructive ways, with addiction to drugs, alcohol, sex and even success being just a few of them. Sometimes abundant life becomes possible only in confrontation and brokenness. Real pastoral care is not about making it feel good; it is about helping wholeness to be created. Paul understood that and every pastor must learn it sooner or later. Wholeness is seen in the freedom to be, in the ability to escape the survival mentality that inevitably locks us into self-centeredness. Wholeness is found in the maturity of being able to live for another by giving our love away. It will be through the lens of that understanding of pastoral care that I will seek to explore the issues found in the epistles to the Corinthians.
The Corinthian congregation appears to have had more than its share of pastoral needs and even to have exasperated Paul on more than one occasion. Some of the issues to which he refers are party lines and divisions among the people. Some claimed loyalty to Paul, some to Apollos and still others to Peter. Beyond that their rowdy behavior had begun to distort the worship of the people. In that early part of Christian history the Eucharist was begun with a community meal called “The Agape Feast.” The Corinthians, however, had turned this common meal into a gluttonous orgy that left some of the poor hungry. Then they had turned the Eucharistic wine into an occasion of public drunkenness. Paul obviously needed to speak to this behavior.
There was also a dispute in the congregation about the meat served at this “Agape Feast.” It had been bought at a local butcher shop where, in this pagan society, it had been slaughtered in ceremonial offerings to the idols of the people. Could Christians eat meat that had been offered to idols? Some Corinthian followers of Jesus were offended by this idea. Still others had become enamored with Paul’s message of salvation as the ultimate expression of God’s grace and the conviction that this grace, so abundantly and freely given, was not dependent on their personal behavior. This meant that they had now become what the church came to call “anti-nomianism,” that is, some were suggesting that the more they sinned, the more God’s grace abounded. This stance appeared to render any sense of personal ethical responsibility completely meaningless. Still others seemed to have a hierarchy of value associated with certain activities of the synagogue. Prophets who shared their prophetic words with the congregation were deemed to be of less value than those who claimed the gift of “glossolalia” or “speaking in tongues,” that is, the ability to utter words that only God could understand. This was, they seemed to think, the highest gift of all and thus the most to be honored.
If this were not enough for one pastor to deal with, there was also a gender dispute going on. Some Corinthian women seemed to take seriously Paul’s words, in his earlier letter to the Galatians, that “in Christ there is neither male nor female, but all are one.” This new freedom and equality for women obviously challenged the patriarchal value system of that ancient world. Some women, quite clearly, pushed these boundaries well beyond even Paul’s comfort level. No one, not even Paul, escapes his or her cultural prejudices completely. The extent of this boundary pushing becomes obvious when Paul asserts his threatened male authority by saying, “I forbid a woman to have authority over a man!” Since no one forbids what has never happened, these women were overtly claiming authority over men in the life of the church.
While Paul’s prejudiced humanity is in full display in this last conflict, on most of the others he rises to the pastoral challenge. Paul begins by telling them that Christ alone is their foundation and that any division of loyalties among the followers of various leaders was based on the inability to understand that these leaders were simply “servants through which you believed — I planted, Apollos watered, but only God gave the increase.” In regard to the Eucharist, Paul upbraids the members of this congregation for eating and drinking in such a way that some are hungry and some are drunk. He urges them to eat and drink in their own homes and to recognize that the act of breaking bread and drinking wine in the Eucharistic feast is “a participation in the body of Christ” and what his life of love and sacrifice was all about. The Eucharist, he proclaims, is a liturgical way in which they participate in Christ’s wholeness.
Paul takes anti-nomianism on directly, reminding them of their mutual responsibility to one another. He suggests that immorality, at its heart, was to treat another human being as a thing to be used rather than as a person to be loved. He defuses the debate about meat offered to idols by saying that since idols are nothing, meat offered to idols is meat offered to nothing, so there is no prohibition as to its use. He continues, however, by stating that this stance misses the point of this dispute. “All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful but not all things build up.” It was a subtle, but powerful, distinction. The evil in this debate, he continues, is the lack of sensitivity on the part of some to the feelings of others. Candy is not evil, but to offer candy to one battling with obesity is not loving. It does not build up the person or fulfill the goal of Christ.
Finally, Paul gets to the debate on spiritual gifts. There is no hierarchy of gifts, he argues, for all gifts are in the service of the same spirit and are expressions of the same God who inspires us all. The gifts of the people offered in worship are necessary to the building up of all, he suggests. Every gift is for the benefit of the whole community that he calls the body of Christ. Following that analogy of the body, he moves on to suggest that their bickering as to whose gift is the most important makes as much sense as a debate between the eye, the ear, the hand and the foot as to which part of the body has the higher value.
This sets the stage for Paul’s writing of what is surely the most beautiful, the most memorable and the most quoted passage in the entire Pauline corpus. After describing the body in which the various organ and parts work together for the good of the whole, Paul says, “I will show you a more excellent way.” Then he begins his famous ode to love.
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” He continues by defining love as patient, kind, not boastful or jealous and never ending. He recognized that all human knowledge is partial. No one sees God face to face. We all see “through a glass darkly.” He urges the Corinthians to put away childish things and to grow up. Finally, he concludes “that faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” It is Paul at his insightful best.~ John Shelby Spong |
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9/10/20, Progressing Spirit, Lauren Van Ham: When Everything Becomes Sacred; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 10 Sep '20
by Ellie Stock 10 Sep '20
10 Sep '20
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When Everything Becomes Sacred
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| Essay by Rev. Lauren Van Ham
September 10, 2020
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
Hebrew Scriptures, Micah 6:8
The flower is always the bud’s undoing. Let go then. Step into the river lean into the wind let the strength of the earth rise through you. Watch your fingertips burst into bloom.
- Pavithra K Mehta
At Progressing Spirit, we get nudged and inspired to walk Jesus’s talk. In the last few weeks alone, we’ve looked at making reparations, exercising our humility, using our prophetic imagination, learning from each apocalypse and taking lessons on engagement from the late Congressman John Lewis. Thank you, Authors, Scholars, Teachers and Pastors! These weekly reads provide reassurance and stimulation – a steady reminder that we are able, that the time for engaging is now, and that we are part of a good community, caring and struggling together.
In a phone call not long before his transition to the next world, American filmmaker Ava DuVernay asked Representative John Lewis what she should do. She was feeling pulled in many directions and every issue felt important. “Ava,” he responded, “Do Everything.”
At first glance it’s comical, right? And completely unrealistic. Or borderline abusive? Thomas Merton, another non-violent peace activist wrote, “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.”
But when held in a different way, I feel a powerful Zen koan in Lewis’s words. Perhaps this mantra, “Do Everything,” is interchangeable with “Be Everything.” I’m thinking about the Living System, of which we’re a part. Imagine a forest, miles and miles of prairie grass roots, the mycelial web, a bee hive. In any of these there is the organism itself, and there is the larger network. The tree is itself, and it is also every other tree, as it sends messages and aid in one moment, and receives messages and support in another.
There is an incredible willingness on the part of the trees, grasses, fungi, bees, to participate in the larger picture. Then again, if they sever communal ties, life will be much harder, and quite short. In the Living System, we observe how Life reveres Life. In the colonizing or extractive system, we feel the lack of reverence. Not only is there incredible disregard for the larger network, there is fear. An unwillingness to be curious, to be expanded, to develop intimacy.
My friends and teachers at Movement Generation, an Ecology & Justice project based in Oakland, CA put it like this:
Story + Land = Place
Story + Land + Sacredness = Home
And then they add:
The colonial mind is homeless
There is an incredible willingness on the part of the trees, grasses, fungi, bees, to participate in the larger picture. Then again, if they sever communal ties, life will be much harder, and quite short. In the Living System, we observe how Life reveres Life. In the colonizing or extractive system, we feel the lack of reverence. Not only is there incredible disregard for the larger network, there is fear. An unwillingness to be curious, to be expanded, to develop intimacy.
But when held in a different way, I feel a powerful Zen koan in Lewis’s words. Perhaps this mantra, “Do Everything,” is interchangeable with “Be Everything.” I’m thinking about the Living System, of which we’re a part. Imagine a forest, miles and miles of prairie grass roots, the mycelial web, a bee hive. In any of these there is the organism itself, and there is the larger network. The tree is itself, and it is also every other tree, as it sends messages and aid in one moment, and receives messages and support in another.
In a phone call not long before his transition to the next world, American filmmaker Ava DuVernay asked Representative John Lewis what she should do. She was feeling pulled in many directions and every issue felt important. “Ava,” he responded, “Do Everything.” At first glance it’s comical, right? And completely unrealistic. Or borderline abusive? Thomas Merton, another non-violent peace activist wrote, “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.”
In the Living System “everything” and “everyone” is biodiversity. Biodiversity is our best defense, and it’s regenerative! While the extractive system mines and mono-crops the minerals and much needed microbes from healthy soil in order to do one thing, a biodiverse system uses the complexity of “everything” to fulfill a variety of needs like replenishing oxygen, sequestering carbon in forests, pollinating crops, and creating compost from waste.
In Hebrew scripture, the prophets arrive on the scene to disrupt the colonizing system, the extractive system. Their words call out hypocrisy and point to corruption. This was hard work then, and it’s especially hard work now, as most of us have experienced how our prophetic voice only gets us so far before we see ourselves also complicit in a very tangled system. It’s been designed that way; but it doesn’t mean we should go back to sleep. Instead, we need to return to what’s sacred.
The regenerative system puts sacredness at the center. It recognizes relationships and the labor of living as valuable. The labor of living? Yes, the energy we (humans, birds, vegetables, algae, all of us) take from the sun, and turn into flowers… or flight… or answering emails, making soup, running a marathon, singing a lullaby, facilitating a group discussion, you get the idea. The labor of living is what all of us do, and all of it holds value in the larger system. But which system?
If we are feeling stuck in place and utterly homeless, it’s a good indication that we’re in the colonizing system (Story + Land = Place). And if you’re feeling it, you’re not alone. I’m feeling it too. In my conversations with people living around the world, the unifying theme is how vital it has become to protect the Living System, to regard the sacredness of all life and to care for one another and all species in a way that reflects how deeply we need one another. Reflecting on a protected natural space near her home, author Jenny Odell describes it this way,
Our fates are linked, to each other, to the places where we are, and everyone and
everything that lives in them. …It’s scary, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. That same relationship to the richness of place lets me partake of it too, allowing me to shape-shift like the flock of birds, to flow inland and out to sea, to rise and fall, to breathe. It’s a vital reminder that as a human, I am heir to this complexity - that I was born, not engineered. That’s why, when I worry about the estuary’s diversity, I am also worrying about my own diversity - about having the best, most alive parts of myself paved over by a ruthless logic of use. When I worry about the birds, I am also worrying about watching all my possible selves go extinct. And when I worry that no one will see the value of these murky waters, it is also a worry that I will be stripped of my own unusable parts, my own mysteries and my own depths.Humans made the extractive system, and humans can un-make it. We need to contest our current systems of power and return to one where sacredness is at the center. When sacredness is the measurement of value, “everything” is not too much, but rather wonderfully, and necessarily diverse, supporting of all parts of the Living System. Like that hive of bees, we each participate in “everything” so that everyone is supported. Let’s do everything so that one day – not too far away – we are living and working in an economy that has been designed for the ones who are most excluded (the “least of these,” Matthew 25:40), so that sufficiency and generosity holds us all. Let’s do everything so that one day – this one feels more distant – we have learned how to navigate hurt and harm without prisons and police so that there can be no more prisons and police.Both of these examples might magnify the grief of the moment. And it’s very true that jumping to solutions too quickly is a form of denial, so let’s, please be honest and gentle with our grief and our anger. And then, just like the tree, sending and receiving aid and support for every other tree, let’s accept the invitation to lean in and embody what the Hebrew prophets, Jesus and many other brave change-makers have modeled. Let’s do everything!~ Rev. Lauren Van Ham
Read online here
About the Author
Rev. Lauren Van Ham, MA was born and raised beneath the big sky of the Midwest, Lauren holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Naropa University and The Chaplaincy Institute. Following her ordination in 1999, Lauren served as an interfaith chaplain in both healthcare (adolescent psychiatry and palliative care), and corporate settings (organizational development and employee wellness). Lauren’s passion for spirituality, art and Earth's teachings have supported her specialization in eco-ministry, grief & loss, and sacred activism. Her essay, "Way of the Eco-Chaplain," appears in the collection, Ways of the Spirit: Voices of Women; and her work with Green Sangha is featured in Renewal, a documentary celebrating the efforts of religious environmental activists from diverse faith traditions across America. Her ideas can be heard on Vennly, an app that shares perspectives from spiritual and community leaders across different backgrounds and traditions. Currently, Lauren tends her private spiritual direction and eco-chaplaincy consulting practice, and serves as Climate Action Coordinator for the United Religions Initiative (URI), and as guest faculty for several schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. |
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Question & Answer
Q: By A Reader
I was really inspired by Rep. Alexia Ocasio-Cortez’s response to the insults of Rep. Ted Yoho, but I was equally disappointed by Yoho’s pseudo-apology. What makes a good apology?
A: By Brian D. McLaren
Dear Reader,First, for those who haven’t seen or read AOC’s eloquent, firm, and gracious response, you can find it here. And if you haven’t seen Rep. Yoho’s apology, you can find it here.Rep. Yoho’s apology really is a case study in what not to do, and I winced when I saw it, remembering times I’ve made the same tired old mistakes.He begins by touting his virtue: “I am a man of my word.” He avoids addressing Rep. Ocasio-Cortez directly, thereby increasing the dehumanization. Instead he says, perfunctorily and with no specificity, “I arise to apologize…” He minimizes the gravity of his offense, as if “abrupt manner” was the offense, and as if the offense would not have been as grave if he had called her a “disgusting f*cking b*tch” less abruptly. Then he mentions being married with two daughters and “being very cognizant of my language,” a common ploy used by men of weak character to hide behind the women in their families. He admits to “offensive language” but minimizes it by saying these words “were attributed to me by the press,” as if the whole problem is the press’s fault, and then further exonerates himself by saying his words “were never spoken to my colleagues,” and apologizes for those who misconstrued them that way — a clever but obvious dodge of the real issue, not to mention a classic act of blame-shifting.He then recalls being on food stamps when he was young, and then becomes teary in empathy for… himself! The final insult of his non-apology comes when he claims the moral high ground: “I cannot apologize for my passion, or for loving my God, my family, and my country.” Having hid behind women and poverty, he then hides behind religion, family, and the flag to defend himself. It was a truly reprehensible performance that reflects mistakes many of us have made in apologizing authentically.The best guidelines I’ve ever encountered for a legitimate apology come from V (formerly known as Eve Ensler), author of The Vagina Monologues. She recommends a four-step process for apology in her powerful book The Apology and in her TED talk, “The Profound Power of an Authentic Apology”:1. Say what, in detail, you did.2. Tell the story of what made you capable of doing what you did, not as an excuse, but as an explanation. In so doing, you show that you have done some inner work of reflection so you can address the deeper roots of your action, which makes you less likely to repeat it in the future.3. Feel what your victim felt.4. Take responsibility and make amends.So, I humbly offer this fix for Rep. Yoho, inserting numbers for the different parts of the apology, in thanks to V:I need to publicly apology to this House, and especially to my esteemed colleague, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 1) I recently called Rep. Ocasio-Cortez a filthy and dehumanizing name. There is no excuse for my action. Then, when caught, I denied it, another inexcusable failure of character. 2) I have examined myself about how I came to this place. I realize that I am an arrogant man and when I encounter a strong and intelligent woman who disagrees with me or my ideology, I want to bring her down in some way. I have never admitted or adequately addressed this toxic masculinity in myself. Now I must. 3) I can only imagine how many other arrogant and childish men my gifted colleague has had to face to get to where she is today, and I feel deep regret about adding to her pain, and the pain of other women. In addition, I regret setting a terrible example for other men, and I must change going forward. 4) I take full responsibility for my actions, and I would like to ask my colleague what it will take to make appropriate amends so I can grow as a human being and a member of Congress, and so that together, we can work for a better Congress, a better country, and a better world. I failed my colleague, this Congress, and my responsibility as a leader to set a positive example, and I am sorry.We can only imagine what a difference an apology like this could have made. May we all have the courage and wisdom to apologize authentically the next time we do wrong and cause someone harm.~ Brian D. McLaren
Read and share online here
About the Author
Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. He is a passionate advocate for “a new kind of Christianity” – just, generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common good. A leader in the Convergence Network he also works closely with the Center for Progressive Renewal/Convergence, the Wild Goose Festival and the Fair Food Program‘s Faith Working Group. His most recent joint project is an illustrated children’s book (for all ages) called Cory and the Seventh Story. Other recent books include: The Great Spiritual Migration, We Make the Road by Walking, and Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? (Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World). |
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Origins of the New Testament, Part VII: Paul's Early Epistles, I Thessalonians and Galatians
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
December 3, 2009In our Origins of the New Testament series, I now turn to the epistles of Paul since he was the first author to write any part of the New Testament. My plan is to divide the authentic writings of Paul into three broad categories. There is what I call “the early Paul,” best seen through his first two epistles, I Thessalonians and Galatians; then there is what I call “the middle Paul,” best illustrated through his most familiar works, I and II Corinthians and Romans; and, finally there is “the late Paul,” best observed through the epistles known as Philemon and Philippians. Please note that these seven epistles constitute what scholars all but universally agree are the authentic letters of Paul. I will examine Paul in his various roles as pastor and as theologian. This Pauline segment of our larger task of examining the origins and makeup of the New Testament will then conclude with a brief analysis of the disputed epistles, the dispute being whether or not they are the authentic works of Paul. That list includes Colossians and II Thessalonians, which very few scholars still contend are Pauline. Then we move on to those about which there is almost no dispute at all, since these letters appear to have been written well after Paul’s death. In this category we locate Ephesians, I and II Timothy and Titus.
Most Christians are unable to discern any differences in voice, tone or content in the entire body of work that we now call the epistles, whether written by Paul or not. That is probably because we never read them as a whole and thus never get a sense of Paul’s specific thinking. We tend to hear them instead only in small snatches being read as lessons in church and with no context. My hope is that through these columns I will be able to provide my readers with sufficient knowledge of the distinctiveness of each epistle that the differences between them become obvious. It might even be exciting to enable people to become biblically literate, which would place them among the minority of Christians who are conversant with Paul’s thinking.
The first epistle that Paul wrote, most scholars agree, was I Thessalonians. It is, however, placed sixth in the epistle section of the Bible because these letters were put into the canon of scripture according to their length. Romans, Paul’s longest letter, is first, and Philemon, Paul’s shortest letter, is last. If they had been listed chronologically I Thessalonians would be first, Galatians second, I and II Corinthians third and fourth, Romans fifth, Philemon sixth and Philippians seventh. So we begin our study of Paul’s content with his first two works.
Thessalonica was the capital of Macedonia and Galatia was in central Asia Minor. The book of Acts tells us that Paul visited both of these towns on his early missionary journeys. He wrote these two epistles in the first few years of the sixth decade, probably between the years 51 and 53. At this time the followers of Jesus were still members of the synagogue. Paul came to each town as a traveling evangelist who also happened to be a rabbi. The venue for his words was thus the Sabbath service in the synagogue, though we need to recognize that in those two towns the synagogues were far removed in both miles and strictness from Judea.
Members of these synagogues were Greek-speaking Hellenized Jews, who lived as members of the Jewish Diaspora. The synagogue was thus not only a worship center for them, it was also their cultic and cultural center. Diaspora synagogues had by this time begun to attract Gentile worshipers. It was a time of great religious ferment in the Greek-speaking Roman Empire. The gods of Olympus had lost most of their appeal. The mystery cults seemed too bizarre and had not yet become established. This meant that the synagogue was more and more a place to which serious worshipers of many varieties turned. In the synagogue there was a firm conviction that God was one. The Torah of the Jews portrayed this one God as concerned about life and ethics, as well as about patterns of worship. As the Jews moved further away from their homeland many of them began to shed the more rigid aspects of their religion, and Judaism for them became more abstract, more spiritual, and less definably Jewish. Gentile worshipers were not drawn to the cultic aspects of Judaism, like kosher dietary rules, circumcision and Sabbath day observance, so these changes made it even more attractive to them.
Paul, as a Greek-thinking Hellenized Jew, was thus frequently more appealing to these modernizing Jews and the Gentile visitors than he was to the stricter Jewish members of the audience, who viewed the synagogue as their last attachment to their ancestry. In Thessalonica Paul had clearly emphasized in his preaching the messianic claim for Jesus. That role had many connotations for the Jews, but among the most compelling was that the messiah, when he came, would establish God’s eternal kingdom and inaugurate God’s earthly rule. In the service of this idea the early disciples of Jesus had been consumed with the task of connecting the life of Jesus to the messianic promises found in their scriptures. They thus searched their sacred writings for hints and clues to prove that Jesus was the expected messiah. Sometimes they stretched these texts beyond the breaking point. At the heart of the Jesus message was the claim that death had been conquered and that his followers would be transported into eternal life very soon. The Gentile visitors to the synagogue had bought this message and had formed themselves into a separate community of believers within the synagogue. They still attended Sabbath day services, but they also gathered on the first day of the week for the Christian liturgy they called “the breaking of the bread,” at which time they prayed “thy kingdom come.”
The obvious desire by Gentiles to be in the synagogue, but not of the synagogue, was more than some traditional Orthodox Jews could tolerate, so Paul and his teaching became a source of divisiveness in the various synagogues of the empire. The Orthodox Jewish believers began to attack Paul’s credentials and his reputation. The Gentile worshipers had turned from idols to the one God of the Jews, but Paul had located this God in the life of Jesus and so deeply convinced them of this that they had begun to wait for Jesus’ promised return from heaven. Clearly this was the message they had heard from Paul.
As time passed, however, the Kingdom did not arrive and they began to waver. When Thessalonian family members began to die, their despair increased. Something was clearly wrong if they died before the kingdom arrived. The bulk of Paul’s message in his first epistle was designed to assure these troubled worshippers that the dead would rejoin the living when that second coming arrived. No one knows, he assured them, either the time or the season when that second coming will occur. Paul, the pastor, thus urged them to be vigilant, to keep awake, to be sober and to put on “the armor of God,” an image that he would expand in later works.
In Galatia, the pastoral issue was a little different. The content of Paul’s message in this second epistle was that in Christ alone their salvation was assured. This had caused those who responded to that message to move dramatically away from the law of the Jews. Keeping the cultic rules of Judaism lost its urgency in Paul’s proclamation of the infinite love of God that he believed had been revealed in the life of Jesus. This seemed to Orthodox Jews to be nothing less than a prescription for moral anarchy and the obliteration of the Torah itself. So they struck back at Paul and were supported by the heavy guns of the more traditional Jewish Christians from Jerusalem, including Peter and James, the Lord’s brother. This tension erupted into the first major division in Christian history. Was the Christ figure merely a new chapter in Judaism? Was he another prophet in a long line of Jewish prophets waiting to be incorporated into the ongoing Jewish story? Did believers in Jesus have to come through the rituals and rites of Judaism in order to be Christians? This was the position that Peter and James took and defended.
For Paul that stance was a violation of everything his Christian experience had taught him. Paul had found in Jesus a love sufficient to embrace him just as he was. Paul had tried the other way. By his own confession he had sought to obey every commandment of the law in order to win salvation. That had not proved to be a path that led him toward wholeness. Religious observance never is. It was and is just another form of human slavery, another attempt to win divine favor, to manipulate the deity with good behavior. At best that approach produced religious self-centeredness, not the glorious liberty of the children of God. For Paul the battle he was fighting in this epistle was for the heart of what he believed was the Christ experience. In defense of his understanding of Christ he mounted a strong counterattack, dismissing Peter’s behavior as unworthy of the gospel and expressing a strong dislike for James, the Lord’s brother. He berated those in the congregation in Galatia who had so quickly abandoned his gospel for this new religious bondage. Galatians reveals Paul not only at his most passionate, but also at his angriest and his most human. Defending his claim to be an apostle, Paul tells us more in this epistle than anywhere else about his conversion experience, and the meaning he found in Jesus that had been the source of his conversion. When the smoke of battle cleared, Paul stood victorious and the book of Acts would later relate the story of Peter’s conversion (see Acts 10).
It is also in Galatians that Paul first articulates the unity that he finds in Christ, who obliterates the human security boundaries between Jews and Gentiles, males and females, bond and free. All are one in Christ, he asserts. Paul, as we noted earlier in this series, felt himself loved beyond anything he had imagined possible and he refused to allow that single message to be compromised. He won this battle, but it would be one that Christians would fight again and again throughout history. Perhaps it was that this message of unqualified love was simply too good to be true. Imagine a God who knows the secrets of our hearts, but who loves us anyway. That is, however, the meaning of the Christ story for Paul and, as such, it would represent a major step into what it means to be human.~ John Shelby Spong |
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Re: [Dialogue] RS 101: On Becoming a Practical Theologian (OBaPT) (Pamphlet and Addendum)
by Dawn Collins 08 Sep '20
by Dawn Collins 08 Sep '20
08 Sep '20
Hi again, friends and colleagues,
The question I'm left with is: Do y'all think an early try-out of this course is virtual worthy? I think the OBaPT weekend construct is adaptable. Yet, the ideal for me is waiting patiently for the face-to-face RS1 model.
Beret, I welcome your feedback and hope to chat with you this week...Remember the point of this OBaPT offering was to speak to the issue of leading the way to care for oneself on the journey with affirming like-minded folks; and which takes place with facilitation after the last section of RS1. Am looking forward to the RS1 materials you're sending as a must-have to my library.
I welcome the present struggle in our community with theological language taking place in the books we're reading and the breakthroughs we're sharing. I also find The Message Bible by Peterson a hospitable companion.
Kindfully yours,dawn
We love the Final Reality because the Final Reality loved us first.- 1 John 4:19 On Monday, September 7, 2020, 10:30:22 AM MDT, Dawn Collins <collinsdawn747(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Dear colleagues and friends,
Whence goeth the path of the traditional and progressive church?
Here are 2 LINKs below (compliments to Wendell Refior and the Global Archives) to be offered in a weekend program (Friday evening to Sunday afternoon) for your church of choice based on RS1. Now that the Archives are called the Social Research Center, these two pieces are filed under Academy RS1 and one other place...Also, be sure to check with Karen Snyder in SRC for a digitized copy of the RS1 Enablement Manual.
This 5 section mini-session is designed to engage participants in working through their individual/corporate faith stance, in contemporary contextual language grasping the relevance of their conclusions to our changing world.
Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you wish to add to this effort of the spirit. Should you desire to accept this mission, I would appreciate your feedback.
Kindfully yours,dawn
https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets//21011pdf (for the 5 sections 15-page OBaPT pamphlet)
https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets/21013pdf (for the 25 questions Addendum)
We love the Final Reality because the Final Reality loved us first.- 1John 4:19
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Hi, all,
Linda Zahrt is having trouble sending the links to the recordings of Saturday’s Celebration of Life, so she asked me to share them here to reach as many people as possible in a timely way.
We deeply appreciated seeing so many colleagues that we haven’t seen for a very long time, and appreciated the wide variety of stories. It was a fitting celebration that shared so many facets and gifts of David and his life.
Thank you for participating! (And I apologize to those who couldn’t get into the session – I discovered too late that my Zoom account only allows 100 people at once, and that there were more than 100 who wanted to participate!)
Here are the links to the two files:
Video recording:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7uwjzy739l27spc/zoom_David%20Z%20Celeb.mp4?dl=0
Chat:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4ee9kx6pj27a3nt/chat%20David%20Z%20Celeb.txt?dl=0
You will need a video player on your device to see the recording. The chat is text only.
With deep gratitude,
Jo
--
Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF <jnelson(a)ica-associates.ca>
Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator
ICA Associates, Inc.
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“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
R. Buckminster Fuller
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RS 101: On Becoming a Practical Theologian (OBaPT) (Pamphlet and Addendum)
by Dawn Collins 07 Sep '20
by Dawn Collins 07 Sep '20
07 Sep '20
Dear colleagues and friends,
Whence goeth the path of the traditional and progressive church?
Here are 2 LINKs below (compliments to Wendell Refior and the Global Archives) to be offered in a weekend program (Friday evening to Sunday afternoon) for your church of choice based on RS1. Now that the Archives are called the Social Research Center, these two pieces are filed under Academy RS1 and one other place...Also, be sure to check with Karen Snyder in SRC for a digitized copy of the RS1 Enablement Manual.
This 5 section mini-session is designed to engage participants in working through their individual/corporate faith stance, in contemporary contextual language grasping the relevance of their conclusions to our changing world.
Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you wish to add to this effort of the spirit. Should you desire to accept this mission, I would appreciate your feedback.
Kindfully yours,dawn
https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets//21011pdf (for the 5 sections 15-page OBaPT pamphlet)
https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets/21013pdf (for the 25 questions Addendum)
We love the Final Reality because the Final Reality loved us first.- 1John 4:19
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