Dialogue
Threads by month
- ----- 2026 -----
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2025 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2024 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2023 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2022 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2021 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2020 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2019 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2018 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2017 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2016 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2015 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2014 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2013 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- ----- 2012 -----
- December
- November
- October
- September
- August
- July
- June
- May
- April
- 6 participants
- 3135 discussions
04 Feb '20
Dear Shelly,
I am delighted that you gave your copy to Doris and are getting another copy for yourself. I look forward to hear her and your reflections on the book and on our lives. Thanks for the invitation to Bloomington. That would be fun. My wife Bonnie went to grad school at IU also, but at a different time.
To other OE/EI/ICA colleagues, enjoy the book, and please share your reflections with me and all of us, and write a review online. Thanks.
Warm wishes,
Rob
................................................................................................
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/
________________________________
From: OE <oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> on behalf of Shelley Hahn via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2020 9:57 PM
To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>
Cc: Shelley Hahn <shelley.l.hahn(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Reflections on service, life, and death
Just received your book today. I'm so excited to read it but I've decided to give this copy to my Mom to read as she settles into her new home ... I'll order another tonight it tomorrow. But I was tickled to see that your journey brought you here to Bloomington briefly before you committed to the Order! 😊 We would all love to host you if you ever find yourself traveling through the Heartland here! Fondest regards, Shelley Hahn
On Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 12:18 PM Robertson Work via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net>> wrote:
Dear colleagues,
I would like to share with you some of my reflections on, among other things, old age, sickness, and death, and would look forward to learn of your own thoughts. My just-published autobiography includes reflections on the death of my wife Mary after our 35 years together, and the deaths of my parents, and parents-in-law. Each one has its own meaning and lessons. Click below:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/robertson-work/serving-people-planet-in-mystery-lo…<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lulu.c…>
[http://static.lulu.com/browse/product_thumbnail.php?productId=24385686&reso…]<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lulu.c…>
Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love and Gratitude by Robertson Work (Paperback) - Lulu<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lulu.c…>
Buy Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love and Gratitude by Robertson Work (Paperback) online at Lulu. Visit the Lulu Marketplace for product details, ratings, and reviews.
www.lulu.com<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lulu.c…>
The book is also full of stories of global service to the "least, the lost, and the last" and to Those Who Care, when I was with the EI/ICA, UNDP, and NYU, and shares some of my reflections on commitment, joy, and sorrow, as I try to be of service to people and planet. It also contains my vision of what is needed at this critical moment in history and how we can participate in bending history.
For the next four days, there is a 40% discount offered on Lulu Publishing. Please click on the URL box above to be taken there.
I look forward to hear from you.
In mystery, love, and gratitude,
Rob
................................................................................................
New book (2020): Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love, and Gratitude https://www.amazon.com/dp/1684716160<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…>
Previous book (2017): A Compassionate Civilization: The Urgency of Sustainable Development and Mindful Activism https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546972617<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…>
Blog: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcompassio…><https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcompassio…><https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcompassio…>
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsonwork/<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linke…>
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/compassionatecivilization/<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.faceb…>
_______________________________________________
OE mailing list
OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:OE@lists.wedgeblade.net>
http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.wedg…>
1
1
For those who indicated interest after my witness, we are officially
launching the Last Chapter Learning Community, and a few other ways to
engage on the topic of death.
Please find all three ways to engage
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d1BU3O6CXdYsGsjtwHDXyoxSeZgK5ES3BSmJF2L…>and
the sign up for the learning community here: bit.ly/thelastchapterica
Looking forward to learning with you all!
Pam Bergdall, Dick Alton, and Seva Gandhi
--
Richard H. T. Alton
One Earth Film Fest ( OEFF)
Green Community Connections
Interfaith Green Network
T: 773.344.7172
richard.alton(a)gmail.com
**Save the Date! One Earth Film Festival 2019, March 1-10*
http:www.oneearthfilmfestival.org
Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2
--
Richard H. T. Alton
One Earth Film Fest ( OEFF)
Green Community Connections
Interfaith Green Network
T: 773.344.7172
richard.alton(a)gmail.com
**Save the Date! One Earth Film Festival 2019, March 1-10*
http:www.oneearthfilmfestival.org
Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2
1
0
For those who indicated interest after my witness, we are officially
launching the Last Chapter Learning Community, and a few other ways to
engage on the topic of death.
Please find all three ways to engage
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d1BU3O6CXdYsGsjtwHDXyoxSeZgK5ES3BSmJF2L…>and
the sign up for the learning community here: bit.ly/thelastchapterica
Looking forward to learning with you all!
Pam Bergdall, Dick Alton, and Seva Gandhi
--
Richard H. T. Alton
One Earth Film Fest ( OEFF)
Green Community Connections
Interfaith Green Network
T: 773.344.7172
richard.alton(a)gmail.com
**Save the Date! One Earth Film Festival 2019, March 1-10*
http:www.oneearthfilmfestival.org
Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2
--
Richard H. T. Alton
One Earth Film Fest ( OEFF)
Green Community Connections
Interfaith Green Network
T: 773.344.7172
richard.alton(a)gmail.com
**Save the Date! One Earth Film Festival 2019, March 1-10*
http:www.oneearthfilmfestival.org
Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2
1
0
For those who indicated interest after my witness, we are officially
launching the Last Chapter Learning Community, and a few other ways to
engage on the topic of death.
Please find all three ways to engage
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d1BU3O6CXdYsGsjtwHDXyoxSeZgK5ES3BSmJF2L…>and
the sign up for the learning community here: bit.ly/thelastchapterica
Looking forward to learning with you all!
Pam Bergdall, Dick Alton, and Seva Gandhi
--
Richard H. T. Alton
One Earth Film Fest ( OEFF)
Green Community Connections
Interfaith Green Network
T: 773.344.7172
richard.alton(a)gmail.com
**Save the Date! One Earth Film Festival 2019, March 1-10*
http:www.oneearthfilmfestival.org
Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2
--
Richard H. T. Alton
One Earth Film Fest ( OEFF)
Green Community Connections
Interfaith Green Network
T: 773.344.7172
richard.alton(a)gmail.com
**Save the Date! One Earth Film Festival 2019, March 1-10*
http:www.oneearthfilmfestival.org
Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2
1
0
Re: [Dialogue] 1/30/20, Progressing Spirit: Matthew Fox: Progressive Christianity, Earth Survival and the Wisdom of Thomas Aquinas; Spong revisited
by laurelcg＠aol.com 30 Jan '20
by laurelcg＠aol.com 30 Jan '20
30 Jan '20
Thanks for sharing this, Ellie. I enjoy the blog every day and am gratified to see it here.
Getting my D.Min. from the University of Creation Spirituality was a great gift for my life. I began the program in 1999, at age 63. In the year that followed, I had lymphoma and my husband Fred fell off a ladder and suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Decided to write my dissertation based on that experience. Many O:E colleagues bought a copy, or the book based on it, entitled Illness as Initiation..
Last year, having lived in Lindsay, CA more than half my life, I helped facilitate building a labyrinth on the lawn of the city hall, a couple of blocks from my house. Enjoy walking it most days, and find myself meditating on the 4 paths of Creation Spirituality as I pass through the 4 quadrants. When I get to the center, I do the Native American Children's Count around the petals in the center, "One is the Sun, Two is the Earth, Three are the Plants, Four are the Animals, Five are the Humans, Six is the Great Mystery".
My first C. S. program was in 1989, I had visited Joan Knutson and the St. Johns in Tokyo after completing a teacher exchange program to Lindsay's sister city near Osaka. Joan and Shirley were excited about a book by Fox, so I checked it out and signed up for the summer program on the campus of Holy Names College in Oakland. I was late registering and my first choice seminars were full. Settled for Starhawk teaching Goddess Thealogy and Sister Jose Hobday, a Seneca nun, teaching Native American Spirituality, I participated in my first sweat lodge, led by Ghost Buckhorse, a Lakota teacher.
Matthew Fox had been silenced (no public speaking or writing) for two years by Bishop Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI. I was privileged to hear Matthew's first publicly spoken words: "As I was saying when I was so rudely interrupted." Eventually, he took ordination as an Episcopal priest. (Their Grace cathedral in San Francisco features a carpet woven with a labyrinth design, and one in stone in the courtyard.)
In gratitude for all of my long life, especially the Word as delivered to me through RS-1 in 1967, It was a fluke for a fundamentalist to be there. Joe Pierce said to me, "The church as always been plagued with literalists."
Jann McGuire
-----Original Message-----
From: Ellie Stock via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>
To: dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>; oe <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>
Cc: Ellie Stock <elliestock(a)aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Jan 30, 2020 7:57 am
Subject: [Dialogue] 1/30/20, Progressing Spirit: Matthew Fox: Progressive Christianity, Earth Survival and the Wisdom of Thomas Aquinas; Spong revisited
#yiv5293764542 p{margin:10px 0;padding:0;}#yiv5293764542 table{border-collapse:collapse;}#yiv5293764542 h1, #yiv5293764542 h2, #yiv5293764542 h3, #yiv5293764542 h4, #yiv5293764542 h5, #yiv5293764542 h6{display:block;margin:0;padding:0;}#yiv5293764542 img, #yiv5293764542 a img{border:0;height:auto;outline:none;text-decoration:none;}#yiv5293764542 body, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542bodyTable, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542bodyCell{min-height:100%;margin:0;padding:0;width:100%;}#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnPreviewText{display:none !important;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542outlook a{padding:0;}#yiv5293764542 img{}#yiv5293764542 table{}#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542ReadMsgBody{width:100%;}#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542ExternalClass{width:100%;}#yiv5293764542 p, #yiv5293764542 a, #yiv5293764542 li, #yiv5293764542 td, #yiv5293764542 blockquote{}#yiv5293764542 a .yiv5293764542filtered99999 , #yiv5293764542 a .yiv5293764542filtered99999 {color:inherit;cursor:default;text-decoration:none;}#yiv5293764542 p, #yiv5293764542 a, #yiv5293764542 li, #yiv5293764542 td, #yiv5293764542 body, #yiv5293764542 table, #yiv5293764542 blockquote{}#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542ExternalClass, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542ExternalClass p, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542ExternalClass td, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542ExternalClass div, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542ExternalClass span, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542ExternalClass font{line-height:100%;}#yiv5293764542 a .yiv5293764542filtered99999 {color:inherit !important;text-decoration:none !important;font-size:inherit !important;font-family:inherit !important;font-weight:inherit !important;line-height:inherit !important;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542bodyCell{padding:10px;}#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542templateContainer{max-width:600px !important;border:5px solid #363232;}#yiv5293764542 a.yiv5293764542mcnButton{display:block;}#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImage, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnRetinaImage{vertical-align:bottom;}#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent{}#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent img{height:auto !important;}#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnDividerBlock{table-layout:fixed !important;}#yiv5293764542 body, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542bodyTable{}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542bodyCell{border-top:0;}#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542templateContainer{border:5px solid #363232;}#yiv5293764542 h1{color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:26px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;}#yiv5293764542 h2{color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:22px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;}#yiv5293764542 h3{color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:20px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;}#yiv5293764542 h4{color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templatePreheader{background-color:#FAFAFA;background-image:none;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center;background-size:cover;border-top:0;border-bottom:0;padding-top:9px;padding-bottom:9px;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templatePreheader .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templatePreheader .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p{color:#656565;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templatePreheader .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent a, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templatePreheader .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p a{color:#656565;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateHeader{background-color:#FFFFFF;background-image:none;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center;background-size:cover;border-top:0;border-bottom:0;padding-top:9px;padding-bottom:0;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateHeader .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateHeader .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p{color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateHeader .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent a, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateHeader .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p a{color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateBody{background-color:#FFFFFF;background-image:none;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center;background-size:cover;border-top:0;border-bottom:2px solid #EAEAEA;padding-top:0;padding-bottom:9px;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateBody .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateBody .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p{color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateBody .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent a, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateBody .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p a{color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateFooter{background-color:#FAFAFA;background-image:none;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center;background-size:cover;border-top:0;border-bottom:0;padding-top:9px;padding-bottom:9px;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateFooter .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateFooter .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p{color:#656565;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;line-height:150%;text-align:center;}#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateFooter .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent a, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateFooter .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p a{color:#656565;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;}@media only screen and (min-width:768px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542templateContainer{width:600px !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 body, #yiv5293764542 table, #yiv5293764542 td, #yiv5293764542 p, #yiv5293764542 a, #yiv5293764542 li, #yiv5293764542 blockquote{}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 body{width:100% !important;min-width:100% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542bodyCell{padding-top:10px !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnRetinaImage{max-width:100% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImage{width:100% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnCartContainer, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnCaptionTopContent, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnRecContentContainer, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnCaptionBottomContent, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnTextContentContainer, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnBoxedTextContentContainer, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImageGroupContentContainer, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnCaptionLeftTextContentContainer, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnCaptionRightTextContentContainer, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnCaptionLeftImageContentContainer, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnCaptionRightImageContentContainer, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImageCardLeftTextContentContainer, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImageCardRightTextContentContainer, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImageCardLeftImageContentContainer, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImageCardRightImageContentContainer{max-width:100% !important;width:100% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnBoxedTextContentContainer{min-width:100% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImageGroupContent{padding:9px !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnCaptionLeftContentOuter .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnCaptionRightContentOuter .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent{padding-top:9px !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImageCardTopImageContent, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnCaptionBottomContent:last-child .yiv5293764542mcnCaptionBottomImageContent, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnCaptionBlockInner .yiv5293764542mcnCaptionTopContent:last-child .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent{padding-top:18px !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImageCardBottomImageContent{padding-bottom:9px !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImageGroupBlockInner{padding-top:0 !important;padding-bottom:0 !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImageGroupBlockOuter{padding-top:9px !important;padding-bottom:9px !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnBoxedTextContentColumn{padding-right:18px !important;padding-left:18px !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImageCardLeftImageContent, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnImageCardRightImageContent{padding-right:18px !important;padding-bottom:0 !important;padding-left:18px !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcpreview-image-uploader{display:none !important;width:100% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 h1{font-size:22px !important;line-height:125% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 h2{font-size:20px !important;line-height:125% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 h3{font-size:18px !important;line-height:125% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 h4{font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent, #yiv5293764542 .yiv5293764542mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templatePreheader{display:block !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templatePreheader .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templatePreheader .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateHeader .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateHeader .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p{font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateBody .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateBody .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateFooter .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent, #yiv5293764542 #yiv5293764542templateFooter .yiv5293764542mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} Thomas Aquinas offers a grounded and substantive spirituality that is Earth based
|
|
|
| View this email in your browser |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Progressive Christianity, Earth Survival
and the Wisdom of Thomas Aquinas
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| Essay by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
January 30, 2020Many people, if they hear the name Thomas Aquinas at all, may not feel that he has anything to say to today’s “progressive” religious and post-religious movement. They would be wrong; dead wrong.
For one reason, post-modern times require pre-modern wisdom. The modern era was useful for many things but no one could accuse it of having, for example, put forth wisdom to match the knowledge that it championed. We are short on wisdom; we are afraid of the mystics; we are beginning to acknowledge that the indigenous peoples and other pre-modern peoples have much to teach us at this time. The deepest thinkers of the middle ages (also pre-modern) have copious wisdom to teach us and Aquinas stands tallest among them all.
First of these is our moving from our modern enrapture with ourselves—our anthropocentrism (what Pope Francis accurately calls our “narcissism”) is killing the Earth as we know it. Not so the medieval consciousness that began, not with us, but with the universe as do all indigenous peoples. Said Aquinas: “The most excellent thing in the universe is not the human but the universe itself.” Endorsing cosmology he also said: “The greatest thing about the human person is that we are capable of the universe.” Consider how cosmology and ecology are related in Thomas Berry’s observation that “ecology is functional cosmology.”
Thomas Aquinas offers a grounded and substantive spirituality that is Earth based and that holds the power to rattle our personal and collective cages and wake us up in this critical decade that faces us. Whether we call it Extinction Rebellion or Climate Emergency or Apocalypse, whatever nomenclature we assign to it, there is no question that the next decade is going to be demanding of us all, a time for “all hands on deck” and all hearts and minds also. Earth is undergoing an extinction spasm that is unprecedented since sixty-five billion years ago when the dinosaurs (and many other species) went extinct. Vast migrations to escape rising seas and floods and drought-filled areas are sure to follow - unless we respond generously to change our ways in the next ten years.
We who now live in a post-modern world may boast of the accomplishments in the modern era that included the printing press, liberal distribution of the Scriptures and other written materials, liberal democracies, the more recent revolution of social media and internet; critical biblical exegesis that is able to tell us what were the true words of Jesus in the Gospels and what words have been put into his mouth by the larger community, etc. We can brag about the advances of science and knowledge of the cosmos and our bodies and minds and the rest. All that is to the good. And Aquinas, who spent his entire life bringing science and religion together, would rejoice.
His life-long effort to bring Aristotle, the “new” scientist of his day being furiously translated into Latin by Muslim scribes, was not met with clapping and rejoicing, but with scowls and eventually (shortly after his death) three very public condemnations by bishops in Oxford and Paris. His was a risky endeavor for Aristotle had three strikes against him:
1. He was a scientist—and “Who needs science?” exclaimed the fundamentalists of his day (as ours). “We have all the answers in our Bible book” (and all the questions too apparently).
2. He was a “pagan.”
3. He came by way of Islam
But Aquinas stood up and took the heat. “A mistake about creation results in a mistake about God” said he—and this was 800 years before the religious homophobes of our day turn their back on scientific conclusions about homosexuality established in the 1970’s. As for being a “pagan,” Aquinas said that “all truth—whoever utters it—comes from the holy Spirit” and that “pagans possessed genuine virtues” and that all cultures have their prophets. Scientists are surely included in the “all truth” reference and the truths they uncover are also born of the Holy Spirit.
As for Islam, Aquinas knew theirs was a superior culture in his day to the Christian West. After all, the invention of the University was their idea and Aquinas was awakened as a sixteen year old on visiting the University of Naples. There he discovered Aristotle as well as the new upstart Dominican Order that his mother found so radical that she had his brothers kidnap Thomas when she learned that he wanted to join them. Aquinas spent valuable years teaching at the mother of the Universities, the University of Paris which, we should remember, grounded its theology in the Scriptures. Aquinas was very adept at employing the scholastic methodology which also came from Islam and was considered so radical because it sought objective answers in preference to simply quoting figures from the past.
In my major book on Aquinas, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, that I published twenty-six years ago and that is appearing from a new publisher in May, 2020, I translated many of Aquinas’ works that have never before been in English, French, German or Italian, and especially his Biblical commentaries where he is often at his freest and most creative. I employ many of those translations in my current book, The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times.
Each chapter title in this new book is a sentence from Aquinas’ teaching. Following are a few of them, provocative, demanding and capable of turning a culture upside down and inside out:
The experience of God must not be restricted to the few or to the old.
’They shall get drunk on the beauty of thy house,’ i.e. the Universe.
Revelation comes in two volumes: Nature and the Bible.
Sheer Joy is God’s and this demands companionship.
Joy is the human’s noblest act.
Religion is supreme thankfulness or gratitude.
The first and primary meaning of salvation is this: To preserve things in the good.
The same Spirit who hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation hovers
over the mind of the artist at work.
We ought to cherish the body and celebrate the wonderful communion of body and soul.
Every truth without exception--and whoever may utter it—is from the Holy Spirit.
Revelation has been made to many pagans.
We are united to God as to One Unknown.
The greatest accomplishment of the human mind is to know that it does not know who God is.
It is a great thing to do miracles. But it is a greater thing to live virtuously.
The proper objects of the heart are truth and justice.
The vision of God is arrived at through Justice.
Compassion is the fire that Jesus came to set on the earth.
A trustworthy person is angry at the right people, for the right reasons, expresses
it in the appropriate manner and for an appropriate length of time.
There is a double Resurrection.
God is a fountain of total Beauty, the most beautiful and the super beautiful.
Christ is a dew for cooling; rain for making fruitful; a seed for bringing forth
the fruit of justice.”
My primary audience for this book is the younger generation—those who face a coming decade that will be filled with profound challenges and demands as the seas rise, droughts increase, floods and hurricanes get more fierce and migration explodes. The young deserve a substantive spiritual grounding for the prophetic work calling them. Aquinas offers it.
In this vein I invited a 26 year old activist priest, Jerry Maynard, to write the Afterword to the book. Here are some of his thoughts in response to encountering Aquinas.
“Fox has revived Aquinas for our time and given him a framework that allows all of us to recognize that this message is the instrument that will give our weary world a new song of liberation.
I experienced a deep sense of being affirmed while reading through this book. I realized that through the words of Aquinas, my generation (Millennials) was being granted permission (by a saint!) not only to claim our rightful place as prophets but also to wholeheartedly embrace our identities as the beloved of God.
Aquinas is testifying to life expressions of many young adults all over this world who have been acting upon the inner tug of Spirit to move forward in daring to build a radically different world where justice is the foundation, elitism is no more, and tenderness is our culture.
Who knew Thomas Aquinas, a medieval theologian and philosopher, was such a revolutionary! Can we also dare to dwell in our innate goodness and demand that we be treated as the beloved children of God?
Our marching orders are clear and the path has been set for us. We do not have the luxury of time to allow external forces to keep us from giving birth to new realities of global justice and cosmic oneness. We must embrace the beautiful wisdom in this book and get to work!”
Some reasons Aquinas is speaking to all ages today are the following: He is eager to relate science to spirituality; he is interfaith and deeply ecumenical; his insistence on non-dualism (the reason he chose Aristotle over Plato and the reason for his being condemned three times) renders him a proto-feminist (Rosemary Ruther declares that non-dualism lies at the heart of the feminist philosophy); he was a great writer about the prophetic and was himself prophetic; he was, while possessing a genius intellect, a profound mystic.
These are elements we all need as we face the twenty-first century challenges that await us no matter what our religion or lack thereof.~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
Read online here
About the Author
Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 35 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 74 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship (called The Cosmic Mass). His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society; A Way To God: Thomas Merton's Creation Spirituality Journey; Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times; Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times; Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest; Stations of the Cosmic Christ; Order of the Sacred Earth; and Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Name for God...Including the Unnameable God |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Question & Answer
Q: By Glenda
Beliefs: So, I have come to a point in my life where I no longer have a belief in a higher power. I was raised Southern Baptist and radiated to Methodist as an adult. After reading several of Dr. Sponge’s books and essays I feel that what I had come to suspect is now true. Now I am lost, its as if there is not a Santa Claus. No being to look after me or my loved ones and perhaps no afterlife either. It’s not as if I am crushed but is it weird that I am still seeking “something”?. What now? On the other hand, there is relief that there is not a God that only favors some, all the contradicting rhetoric in the Bible now doesn’t have to make sense to me. Please help.
A: By Rev. Matthew Syrdal
Dear Glenda,As a soul guide and human development coach I work with people of many different experiences and backgrounds. From my training and perspective I am hearing someone who is undergoing what might be called a spiritual ‘molt.’ A ‘shedding of the skin’ that no longer fits can be disorienting; and many people that tread this path describe it as being ‘lost.’
There are two primary stages of development that this lostness occurs in. The first is a deconstruction of one’s personal beliefs (theology, religion), the old paradigm and worldview no longer fits one’s experience of the world. The second is a deeper shift in one’s psychospiritual center of gravity. Here, cultural ways and often even religious beliefs are left behind in order to explore the deeper mysteries of nature and the soul. The problem is that our culture and religious institutions typically do not know how to support the journey of the Wanderer (the archetype representing a similar stage of development).
There are two primary tasks of these two stages (which may or may not resonate with you). The first is to cultivate deeper personal authenticity and sense of belonging in your life. Who are you really, in relation to your family, friends, church or culture? How do you make choices in support of your new authentic way of being in the world? What relationships will you need to say goodbye to, or habits will you need to end or change, in order to support your most authentic development moving forward? The task for the other stage of faith assumes your life and relationships already reflect your authenticity, that you have cultivated a good degree of personal wholeness, and now (in the language of myth) you are ready to sever from a life oriented around culture and religion even, and the path before you might be a plunge into the mysteries of nature and the soul. Many religions including Christianity give us images and stories of this journey that are rich in the perennial wisdom tradition, but in practice it is lost on western society.
You say that you are ‘not crushed’ and that you are ‘still seeking something.’ Feeling and experiencing, rather than merely thinking, are other windows of discovery, assisting us to deepen into any grief we might feel with the loss of our old identity/beliefs, and also amplify any longing we may feel that is inviting us into the unknown. There are a few ‘schools’ and ‘training programs’ out there, including my own work, that assist in the journey of individuation and psycho-spiritual growth through life stages that most churches and retreat centers aren’t designed to address. I would suggest giving yourself the permission and freedom of spiritual exploration, and finding a community that is healthy and resourced enough to assist you in your exploration. Blessings on your journey!~ Rev. Matthew Syrdal
Read and share online here
About the Author
Rev. Matthew Syrdal M.Div., lives in the front range of Colorado with his beautiful family. Matt is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian church (USA), founder and lead guide of WilderSoul and Church of Lost Walls and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country. In his years of studying ancient Christian Rites of Initiation, world religions, anthropology, rites-of-passage and eco- psychology Matt seeks to re-wild what it means to be human. His work weaves in myth and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world in which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in the discovery of “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. Matt has been coaching, and guiding since becoming a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute and is currently training to become a soul initiation guide through the SAIP program. |
|
|
| |
|
|
| Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together. Thank you for being a part of this community! |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Origins of the Bible, Part XVI: Daniel
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
November 27, 2008History is not well served by the way the Bible is organized. For example, the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy), which seems to tell a continuous story, was actually written over a period of about five hundred years and describes events that occurred over as long a time frame as fourteen hundred years. Yet it is always read in worship as if it is a single story, which makes some of its described events little more than historical nonsense. To take another illustration, a book like Isaiah was written in three parts. The first, roughly chapters 1-39, was composed in the 8th century BCE; the second part, roughly chapters 40-55, was written some two centuries later in the late 6th century BCE; and the third, chapters 56-66, is the work of a 5th century BCE author. Yet for most of both Jewish and Christian history this book has been read as a single cohesive work, making a proper interpretation of its pages all but impossible.
The same distortion of history is found in the lineup of the prophets. The four so-called major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, are placed in that order in the Bible. Yet Isaiah is written time-wise on both sides of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Daniel is in fact a work of the 2nd century BCE but, just to confuse things, purports to be written at the time of the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BCE. Someone who seeks literal truth or literal history in these pages of the Bible will be quite frustrated.
When I began this series of columns on the origins of the Bible early this year, I knew that I would at some point have to make a decision on what order I would follow. I could treat the books of the Bible as they are written or I could reorganize the entire text on the basis of history and their time of writing. I decided to do both. I have thus far treated the Old Testament in the order that it appears in our printed Bible. I started with the documents behind the Torah that produced the books from Genesis to Deuteronomy, then turned to the prophetic movement, dealing with the books of Joshua through II Kings. Even there, however, to make a continuous story I had to skip over such books as Job, The Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations and even the tiny but significant book of Ruth, in order to deal with the prophets as they appear in the Bible. I will go back to these books later. When I come to the New Testament I will treat it in the order that it was written, not the order in which it appears in the Bible. This means that I will begin with Paul and then move to the gospels. That way everyone becomes confused but I think truth will be better served.
The timing problem becomes most apparent this week when I reach the book of Daniel, which is a piece of mythological, allegorical writing designed to strengthen Jewish resistance to the Seleucid king, Antiochus Epiphanes, during the period of the Maccebean revolution in the 160’s BCE. This means that the book of Daniel should not time-wise even be in the Bible at all. It should be part of the Apocrypha, that group of inter-testament books that are no longer considered a constituent part of the Old Testament, at least in Protestant Christianity. It is also true that several stories that were originally additions to the book of Daniel, like “Bel and the Dragon,” the “Prayer of Azarias and the Song of the Three Young Men” and “Susanna,” were in fact taken out of Daniel and placed into the Apocrypha by later biblical editors, but the book of Daniel itself was kept in the canon of the Old Testament despite not belonging there. This act of inclusion means that the stories left in Daniel have become far better known in the Christian world than those relegated to the Apocrypha. We are generally familiar with Daniel in the Lion’s Den and with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace. Familiar phrases from Daniel have also enriched our language, like calling God “The Ancient of Days,” referring to some impending doom as “the handwriting on the wall,” a fatal weakness as possessing “feet of clay,” or taking on strong opponents as “entering the lion’s den.” It is also a fact that Daniel in the Old Testament and the book of Revelation in the New Testament are the two biblical works that are quoted most frequently by those who like to predict the end of the world. We have happily passed through many such projected dates in western history, yet predictions still come from the loony fringe of religion. I do not think they are worth much consideration.
My favorite end of the world story came when I received a warning letter from a priest that the world was about to come to an end. He had a specific date and time on which he seemed sure that this would happen. He quoted a number of biblical sources, including Daniel, to prove his point. I must say that I did not begin to make preparations. A few days later I received an invitation from the wife of this priest inviting me to his 50th birthday celebration. The party was scheduled for about ten days after the end of the world. What a relief! Not even his wife believed his theory.
When we turn to the content of the book of Daniel, we discover that it is divided into two primary sections. The first is a series of stories about Daniel which fills chapter 1-6. The second section is a series of visions that have played a role in the development of Christian history. The first vision has a character in it known as the “Son of Man.” It was Ezekiel who first introduced this phrase to our religious vocabulary. When Ezekiel used it, however, it was just a title by which God called Ezekiel, simply Ezekiel’s name. It designated him only as a human being. It had no divine connotations. When Jesus used that title many years later, however, it had a much more dramatic meaning. It was in fact a claim of divinity. That title had to have made quite a journey for its meaning to have been transformed that dramatically from Ezekiel to Jesus. It did, and it was in one of the visions of Daniel that it was transformed. “Son of Man” in Daniel was the name of an apocalyptic supernatural divine figure who would usher in the Kingdom of God and put an end to the persecution of the faithful. The “Son of Man” in Daniel traveled on the clouds of heaven and was given dominion, glory and kingship. All the nations of the world would serve him. His throne would be everlasting and of his kingdom there would be no end. We become aware, when we read the New Testament, that these images were attached to the Jesus story, first by Matthew in his parable of the Judgment, when the Son of Man will separate the sheep from the goats and, second, in Matthew’s account of Jesus appearing as the resurrected one to the disciples out of the sky on a mountain top in Galilee. In that narrative he came on the clouds clothed with the authority of heaven and earth to send the disciples out on a mission “to all the world.” Luke also borrows Daniel’s imagery when he told the story of Jesus’ ascension.
Daniel was also a pivotal book in the Jewish development of ideas about life after death. In the last chapter of Daniel the author refers to the time at the end of the world when the great deliverance would come. “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth,” says Daniel, “shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting shame and contempt.” Reward and punishment from this time on became the major feature of life after death.
Prior to the 2nd century BCE, the Jewish people spoke little about life after death. The only concept generally abroad was that of “Sheol.” Sheol was located in the “middle of the earth.” It was not a place of reward or punishment, it was simply the abode of the dead. No one looked forward to it. No one was comforted by it. Everyone who died went to it. If it was described at all, it was described as shadowy or as shades of life, ghostlike with no sense of joy.
When Daniel was written, however, religious persecution against the Jews had reached horrendous proportions. The Jews were forced by their enemies to eat food they regarded as unclean. The Temple was itself polluted with the installation of the head of a swine in the “Holy of Holies,” an unclean animal in the very dwelling place of God. The Jews called it “the abomination of desolation.” Those Jews who refused to violate their religious practices were summarily executed. The book we call II Macabees, written at the same time the book of Daniel was written, tells the story of seven brothers who, along with their mother, were arrested and were compelled to eat the flesh of a swine. The oldest brother refused and his tongue was cut out. Then he was scalped and his hands and feet were chopped off. Finally, he was taken, still breathing, to a fire and burned up. With this vision still vivid, the next brother was told he should eat the flesh of the swine or suffer the same fate. He refused and was similarly disposed of. This procedure continued until all seven brothers had been murdered. Then the mother died. It is a dreadful story.
That story, however, became a powerful instrument in giving birth to a new concept and a new passion among the Jews for life after death. That is what finds expression in the 12th and final chapter of Daniel. The driving theme was that without life after death for these faithful martyrs the very justice of God was at stake. If faithfulness to God is not rewarded beyond this life then God cannot be just. Then evil does in fact triumph over God. So heaven and hell became the categories of divine justice and the afterlife was employed to make fair this unfair world. The book of Daniel was pivotal in this transformation and, as such, exercised an enormous influence on the development of Christianity as the afterlife became crucial to the human sense of justice in both the crucifixion of Jesus and the later persecution of the Christians in loyalty to their Christ. The Book of Daniel is not a profound book, but one wonders what Christianity might have looked like if it had not been for this book. For me, however, to think of the afterlife as a place of reward or punishment distorts that concept completely. That, however, is the subject for a future column, perhaps a future book.~ John Shelby Spong |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Announcements
Citizen Discourse’s Conscious Culture
& Active Listening Workshop SeriesIn commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s belief in the power of dialogue and the 40 Days of Peace, the Charter for Compassion is offering Citizen Discourse’s Conscious Culture & Active Listening Workshop Series, Online February 12, 19 and 26, 9 am Pacific time. READ ON ... |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
_______________________________________________
Dialogue mailing list
Dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net
http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
1
0
1/30/20, Progressing Spirit: Matthew Fox: Progressive Christianity, Earth Survival and the Wisdom of Thomas Aquinas; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 30 Jan '20
by Ellie Stock 30 Jan '20
30 Jan '20
#yiv9482967504 p{ margin:10px 0;padding:0;} #yiv9482967504 table{ border-collapse:collapse;} #yiv9482967504 h1, #yiv9482967504 h2, #yiv9482967504 h3, #yiv9482967504 h4, #yiv9482967504 h5, #yiv9482967504 h6{ display:block;margin:0;padding:0;} #yiv9482967504 img, #yiv9482967504 a img{ border:0;height:auto;outline:none;text-decoration:none;} #yiv9482967504 body, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504bodyTable, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504bodyCell{ min-height:100%;margin:0;padding:0;width:100%;} #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnPreviewText{ display:none !important;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504outlook a{ padding:0;} #yiv9482967504 img{ } #yiv9482967504 table{ } #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504ReadMsgBody{ width:100%;} #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504ExternalClass{ width:100%;} #yiv9482967504 p, #yiv9482967504 a, #yiv9482967504 li, #yiv9482967504 td, #yiv9482967504 blockquote{ } #yiv9482967504 a .filtered99999 , #yiv9482967504 a .filtered99999 { color:inherit;cursor:default;text-decoration:none;} #yiv9482967504 p, #yiv9482967504 a, #yiv9482967504 li, #yiv9482967504 td, #yiv9482967504 body, #yiv9482967504 table, #yiv9482967504 blockquote{ } #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504ExternalClass, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504ExternalClass p, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504ExternalClass td, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504ExternalClass div, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504ExternalClass span, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504ExternalClass font{ line-height:100%;} #yiv9482967504 a .filtered99999 { color:inherit !important;text-decoration:none !important;font-size:inherit !important;font-family:inherit !important;font-weight:inherit !important;line-height:inherit !important;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504bodyCell{ padding:10px;} #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504templateContainer{ max-width:600px !important;border:5px solid #363232;} #yiv9482967504 a.yiv9482967504mcnButton{ display:block;} #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImage, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnRetinaImage{ vertical-align:bottom;} #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent{ } #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent img{ height:auto !important;} #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnDividerBlock{ table-layout:fixed !important;} #yiv9482967504 body, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504bodyTable{ } #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504bodyCell{ border-top:0;} #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504templateContainer{ border:5px solid #363232;} #yiv9482967504 h1{ color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:26px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;} #yiv9482967504 h2{ color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:22px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;} #yiv9482967504 h3{ color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:20px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;} #yiv9482967504 h4{ color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templatePreheader{ background-color:#FAFAFA;background-image:none;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center;background-size:cover;border-top:0;border-bottom:0;padding-top:9px;padding-bottom:9px;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templatePreheader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templatePreheader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ color:#656565;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templatePreheader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent a, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templatePreheader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p a{ color:#656565;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateHeader{ background-color:#FFFFFF;background-image:none;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center;background-size:cover;border-top:0;border-bottom:0;padding-top:9px;padding-bottom:0;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateHeader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateHeader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateHeader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent a, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateHeader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p a{ color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateBody{ background-color:#FFFFFF;background-image:none;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center;background-size:cover;border-top:0;border-bottom:2px solid #EAEAEA;padding-top:0;padding-bottom:9px;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateBody .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateBody .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateBody .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent a, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateBody .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p a{ color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateFooter{ background-color:#FAFAFA;background-image:none;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center;background-size:cover;border-top:0;border-bottom:0;padding-top:9px;padding-bottom:9px;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateFooter .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateFooter .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ color:#656565;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;line-height:150%;text-align:center;} #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateFooter .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent a, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateFooter .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p a{ color:#656565;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;} @media only screen and (min-width:768px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504templateContainer{ width:600px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 body, #yiv9482967504 table, #yiv9482967504 td, #yiv9482967504 p, #yiv9482967504 a, #yiv9482967504 li, #yiv9482967504 blockquote{ } }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 body{ width:100% !important;min-width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504bodyCell{ padding-top:10px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnRetinaImage{ max-width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImage{ width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnCartContainer, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnCaptionTopContent, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnRecContentContainer, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnCaptionBottomContent, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnTextContentContainer, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnBoxedTextContentContainer, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImageGroupContentContainer, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnCaptionLeftTextContentContainer, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnCaptionRightTextContentContainer, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnCaptionLeftImageContentContainer, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnCaptionRightImageContentContainer, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImageCardLeftTextContentContainer, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImageCardRightTextContentContainer, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImageCardLeftImageContentContainer, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImageCardRightImageContentContainer{ max-width:100% !important;width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnBoxedTextContentContainer{ min-width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImageGroupContent{ padding:9px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnCaptionLeftContentOuter .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnCaptionRightContentOuter .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent{ padding-top:9px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImageCardTopImageContent, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnCaptionBottomContent:last-child .yiv9482967504mcnCaptionBottomImageContent, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnCaptionBlockInner .yiv9482967504mcnCaptionTopContent:last-child .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent{ padding-top:18px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImageCardBottomImageContent{ padding-bottom:9px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImageGroupBlockInner{ padding-top:0 !important;padding-bottom:0 !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImageGroupBlockOuter{ padding-top:9px !important;padding-bottom:9px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnBoxedTextContentColumn{ padding-right:18px !important;padding-left:18px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImageCardLeftImageContent, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnImageCardRightImageContent{ padding-right:18px !important;padding-bottom:0 !important;padding-left:18px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcpreview-image-uploader{ display:none !important;width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 h1{ font-size:22px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 h2{ font-size:20px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 h3{ font-size:18px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 h4{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templatePreheader{ display:block !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templatePreheader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templatePreheader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateHeader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateHeader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateBody .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateBody .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateFooter .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateFooter .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } Thomas Aquinas offers a grounded and substantive spirituality that is Earth based
|
|
|
| View this email in your browser |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Progressive Christianity, Earth Survival
and the Wisdom of Thomas Aquinas
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| Essay by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
January 30, 2020Many people, if they hear the name Thomas Aquinas at all, may not feel that he has anything to say to today’s “progressive” religious and post-religious movement. They would be wrong; dead wrong.
For one reason, post-modern times require pre-modern wisdom. The modern era was useful for many things but no one could accuse it of having, for example, put forth wisdom to match the knowledge that it championed. We are short on wisdom; we are afraid of the mystics; we are beginning to acknowledge that the indigenous peoples and other pre-modern peoples have much to teach us at this time. The deepest thinkers of the middle ages (also pre-modern) have copious wisdom to teach us and Aquinas stands tallest among them all.
First of these is our moving from our modern enrapture with ourselves—our anthropocentrism (what Pope Francis accurately calls our “narcissism”) is killing the Earth as we know it. Not so the medieval consciousness that began, not with us, but with the universe as do all indigenous peoples. Said Aquinas: “The most excellent thing in the universe is not the human but the universe itself.” Endorsing cosmology he also said: “The greatest thing about the human person is that we are capable of the universe.” Consider how cosmology and ecology are related in Thomas Berry’s observation that “ecology is functional cosmology.”
Thomas Aquinas offers a grounded and substantive spirituality that is Earth based and that holds the power to rattle our personal and collective cages and wake us up in this critical decade that faces us. Whether we call it Extinction Rebellion or Climate Emergency or Apocalypse, whatever nomenclature we assign to it, there is no question that the next decade is going to be demanding of us all, a time for “all hands on deck” and all hearts and minds also. Earth is undergoing an extinction spasm that is unprecedented since sixty-five billion years ago when the dinosaurs (and many other species) went extinct. Vast migrations to escape rising seas and floods and drought-filled areas are sure to follow - unless we respond generously to change our ways in the next ten years.
We who now live in a post-modern world may boast of the accomplishments in the modern era that included the printing press, liberal distribution of the Scriptures and other written materials, liberal democracies, the more recent revolution of social media and internet; critical biblical exegesis that is able to tell us what were the true words of Jesus in the Gospels and what words have been put into his mouth by the larger community, etc. We can brag about the advances of science and knowledge of the cosmos and our bodies and minds and the rest. All that is to the good. And Aquinas, who spent his entire life bringing science and religion together, would rejoice.
His life-long effort to bring Aristotle, the “new” scientist of his day being furiously translated into Latin by Muslim scribes, was not met with clapping and rejoicing, but with scowls and eventually (shortly after his death) three very public condemnations by bishops in Oxford and Paris. His was a risky endeavor for Aristotle had three strikes against him:
1. He was a scientist—and “Who needs science?” exclaimed the fundamentalists of his day (as ours). “We have all the answers in our Bible book” (and all the questions too apparently).
2. He was a “pagan.”
3. He came by way of Islam
But Aquinas stood up and took the heat. “A mistake about creation results in a mistake about God” said he—and this was 800 years before the religious homophobes of our day turn their back on scientific conclusions about homosexuality established in the 1970’s. As for being a “pagan,” Aquinas said that “all truth—whoever utters it—comes from the holy Spirit” and that “pagans possessed genuine virtues” and that all cultures have their prophets. Scientists are surely included in the “all truth” reference and the truths they uncover are also born of the Holy Spirit.
As for Islam, Aquinas knew theirs was a superior culture in his day to the Christian West. After all, the invention of the University was their idea and Aquinas was awakened as a sixteen year old on visiting the University of Naples. There he discovered Aristotle as well as the new upstart Dominican Order that his mother found so radical that she had his brothers kidnap Thomas when she learned that he wanted to join them. Aquinas spent valuable years teaching at the mother of the Universities, the University of Paris which, we should remember, grounded its theology in the Scriptures. Aquinas was very adept at employing the scholastic methodology which also came from Islam and was considered so radical because it sought objective answers in preference to simply quoting figures from the past.
In my major book on Aquinas, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, that I published twenty-six years ago and that is appearing from a new publisher in May, 2020, I translated many of Aquinas’ works that have never before been in English, French, German or Italian, and especially his Biblical commentaries where he is often at his freest and most creative. I employ many of those translations in my current book, The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times.
Each chapter title in this new book is a sentence from Aquinas’ teaching. Following are a few of them, provocative, demanding and capable of turning a culture upside down and inside out:
The experience of God must not be restricted to the few or to the old.
’They shall get drunk on the beauty of thy house,’ i.e. the Universe.
Revelation comes in two volumes: Nature and the Bible.
Sheer Joy is God’s and this demands companionship.
Joy is the human’s noblest act.
Religion is supreme thankfulness or gratitude.
The first and primary meaning of salvation is this: To preserve things in the good.
The same Spirit who hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation hovers
over the mind of the artist at work.
We ought to cherish the body and celebrate the wonderful communion of body and soul.
Every truth without exception--and whoever may utter it—is from the Holy Spirit.
Revelation has been made to many pagans.
We are united to God as to One Unknown.
The greatest accomplishment of the human mind is to know that it does not know who God is.
It is a great thing to do miracles. But it is a greater thing to live virtuously.
The proper objects of the heart are truth and justice.
The vision of God is arrived at through Justice.
Compassion is the fire that Jesus came to set on the earth.
A trustworthy person is angry at the right people, for the right reasons, expresses
it in the appropriate manner and for an appropriate length of time.
There is a double Resurrection.
God is a fountain of total Beauty, the most beautiful and the super beautiful.
Christ is a dew for cooling; rain for making fruitful; a seed for bringing forth
the fruit of justice.”
My primary audience for this book is the younger generation—those who face a coming decade that will be filled with profound challenges and demands as the seas rise, droughts increase, floods and hurricanes get more fierce and migration explodes. The young deserve a substantive spiritual grounding for the prophetic work calling them. Aquinas offers it.
In this vein I invited a 26 year old activist priest, Jerry Maynard, to write the Afterword to the book. Here are some of his thoughts in response to encountering Aquinas.
“Fox has revived Aquinas for our time and given him a framework that allows all of us to recognize that this message is the instrument that will give our weary world a new song of liberation.
I experienced a deep sense of being affirmed while reading through this book. I realized that through the words of Aquinas, my generation (Millennials) was being granted permission (by a saint!) not only to claim our rightful place as prophets but also to wholeheartedly embrace our identities as the beloved of God.
Aquinas is testifying to life expressions of many young adults all over this world who have been acting upon the inner tug of Spirit to move forward in daring to build a radically different world where justice is the foundation, elitism is no more, and tenderness is our culture.
Who knew Thomas Aquinas, a medieval theologian and philosopher, was such a revolutionary! Can we also dare to dwell in our innate goodness and demand that we be treated as the beloved children of God?
Our marching orders are clear and the path has been set for us. We do not have the luxury of time to allow external forces to keep us from giving birth to new realities of global justice and cosmic oneness. We must embrace the beautiful wisdom in this book and get to work!”
Some reasons Aquinas is speaking to all ages today are the following: He is eager to relate science to spirituality; he is interfaith and deeply ecumenical; his insistence on non-dualism (the reason he chose Aristotle over Plato and the reason for his being condemned three times) renders him a proto-feminist (Rosemary Ruther declares that non-dualism lies at the heart of the feminist philosophy); he was a great writer about the prophetic and was himself prophetic; he was, while possessing a genius intellect, a profound mystic.
These are elements we all need as we face the twenty-first century challenges that await us no matter what our religion or lack thereof.~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
Read online here
About the Author
Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 35 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 74 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship (called The Cosmic Mass). His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society; A Way To God: Thomas Merton's Creation Spirituality Journey; Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times; Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times; Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest; Stations of the Cosmic Christ; Order of the Sacred Earth; and Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Name for God...Including the Unnameable God |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Question & Answer
Q: By Glenda
Beliefs: So, I have come to a point in my life where I no longer have a belief in a higher power. I was raised Southern Baptist and radiated to Methodist as an adult. After reading several of Dr. Sponge’s books and essays I feel that what I had come to suspect is now true. Now I am lost, its as if there is not a Santa Claus. No being to look after me or my loved ones and perhaps no afterlife either. It’s not as if I am crushed but is it weird that I am still seeking “something”?. What now? On the other hand, there is relief that there is not a God that only favors some, all the contradicting rhetoric in the Bible now doesn’t have to make sense to me. Please help.
A: By Rev. Matthew Syrdal
Dear Glenda,As a soul guide and human development coach I work with people of many different experiences and backgrounds. From my training and perspective I am hearing someone who is undergoing what might be called a spiritual ‘molt.’ A ‘shedding of the skin’ that no longer fits can be disorienting; and many people that tread this path describe it as being ‘lost.’
There are two primary stages of development that this lostness occurs in. The first is a deconstruction of one’s personal beliefs (theology, religion), the old paradigm and worldview no longer fits one’s experience of the world. The second is a deeper shift in one’s psychospiritual center of gravity. Here, cultural ways and often even religious beliefs are left behind in order to explore the deeper mysteries of nature and the soul. The problem is that our culture and religious institutions typically do not know how to support the journey of the Wanderer (the archetype representing a similar stage of development).
There are two primary tasks of these two stages (which may or may not resonate with you). The first is to cultivate deeper personal authenticity and sense of belonging in your life. Who are you really, in relation to your family, friends, church or culture? How do you make choices in support of your new authentic way of being in the world? What relationships will you need to say goodbye to, or habits will you need to end or change, in order to support your most authentic development moving forward? The task for the other stage of faith assumes your life and relationships already reflect your authenticity, that you have cultivated a good degree of personal wholeness, and now (in the language of myth) you are ready to sever from a life oriented around culture and religion even, and the path before you might be a plunge into the mysteries of nature and the soul. Many religions including Christianity give us images and stories of this journey that are rich in the perennial wisdom tradition, but in practice it is lost on western society.
You say that you are ‘not crushed’ and that you are ‘still seeking something.’ Feeling and experiencing, rather than merely thinking, are other windows of discovery, assisting us to deepen into any grief we might feel with the loss of our old identity/beliefs, and also amplify any longing we may feel that is inviting us into the unknown. There are a few ‘schools’ and ‘training programs’ out there, including my own work, that assist in the journey of individuation and psycho-spiritual growth through life stages that most churches and retreat centers aren’t designed to address. I would suggest giving yourself the permission and freedom of spiritual exploration, and finding a community that is healthy and resourced enough to assist you in your exploration. Blessings on your journey!~ Rev. Matthew Syrdal
Read and share online here
About the Author
Rev. Matthew Syrdal M.Div., lives in the front range of Colorado with his beautiful family. Matt is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian church (USA), founder and lead guide of WilderSoul and Church of Lost Walls and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country. In his years of studying ancient Christian Rites of Initiation, world religions, anthropology, rites-of-passage and eco- psychology Matt seeks to re-wild what it means to be human. His work weaves in myth and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world in which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in the discovery of “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. Matt has been coaching, and guiding since becoming a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute and is currently training to become a soul initiation guide through the SAIP program. |
|
|
| |
|
|
| Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together. Thank you for being a part of this community! |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Origins of the Bible, Part XVI: Daniel
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
November 27, 2008History is not well served by the way the Bible is organized. For example, the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy), which seems to tell a continuous story, was actually written over a period of about five hundred years and describes events that occurred over as long a time frame as fourteen hundred years. Yet it is always read in worship as if it is a single story, which makes some of its described events little more than historical nonsense. To take another illustration, a book like Isaiah was written in three parts. The first, roughly chapters 1-39, was composed in the 8th century BCE; the second part, roughly chapters 40-55, was written some two centuries later in the late 6th century BCE; and the third, chapters 56-66, is the work of a 5th century BCE author. Yet for most of both Jewish and Christian history this book has been read as a single cohesive work, making a proper interpretation of its pages all but impossible.
The same distortion of history is found in the lineup of the prophets. The four so-called major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, are placed in that order in the Bible. Yet Isaiah is written time-wise on both sides of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Daniel is in fact a work of the 2nd century BCE but, just to confuse things, purports to be written at the time of the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BCE. Someone who seeks literal truth or literal history in these pages of the Bible will be quite frustrated.
When I began this series of columns on the origins of the Bible early this year, I knew that I would at some point have to make a decision on what order I would follow. I could treat the books of the Bible as they are written or I could reorganize the entire text on the basis of history and their time of writing. I decided to do both. I have thus far treated the Old Testament in the order that it appears in our printed Bible. I started with the documents behind the Torah that produced the books from Genesis to Deuteronomy, then turned to the prophetic movement, dealing with the books of Joshua through II Kings. Even there, however, to make a continuous story I had to skip over such books as Job, The Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations and even the tiny but significant book of Ruth, in order to deal with the prophets as they appear in the Bible. I will go back to these books later. When I come to the New Testament I will treat it in the order that it was written, not the order in which it appears in the Bible. This means that I will begin with Paul and then move to the gospels. That way everyone becomes confused but I think truth will be better served.
The timing problem becomes most apparent this week when I reach the book of Daniel, which is a piece of mythological, allegorical writing designed to strengthen Jewish resistance to the Seleucid king, Antiochus Epiphanes, during the period of the Maccebean revolution in the 160’s BCE. This means that the book of Daniel should not time-wise even be in the Bible at all. It should be part of the Apocrypha, that group of inter-testament books that are no longer considered a constituent part of the Old Testament, at least in Protestant Christianity. It is also true that several stories that were originally additions to the book of Daniel, like “Bel and the Dragon,” the “Prayer of Azarias and the Song of the Three Young Men” and “Susanna,” were in fact taken out of Daniel and placed into the Apocrypha by later biblical editors, but the book of Daniel itself was kept in the canon of the Old Testament despite not belonging there. This act of inclusion means that the stories left in Daniel have become far better known in the Christian world than those relegated to the Apocrypha. We are generally familiar with Daniel in the Lion’s Den and with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace. Familiar phrases from Daniel have also enriched our language, like calling God “The Ancient of Days,” referring to some impending doom as “the handwriting on the wall,” a fatal weakness as possessing “feet of clay,” or taking on strong opponents as “entering the lion’s den.” It is also a fact that Daniel in the Old Testament and the book of Revelation in the New Testament are the two biblical works that are quoted most frequently by those who like to predict the end of the world. We have happily passed through many such projected dates in western history, yet predictions still come from the loony fringe of religion. I do not think they are worth much consideration.
My favorite end of the world story came when I received a warning letter from a priest that the world was about to come to an end. He had a specific date and time on which he seemed sure that this would happen. He quoted a number of biblical sources, including Daniel, to prove his point. I must say that I did not begin to make preparations. A few days later I received an invitation from the wife of this priest inviting me to his 50th birthday celebration. The party was scheduled for about ten days after the end of the world. What a relief! Not even his wife believed his theory.
When we turn to the content of the book of Daniel, we discover that it is divided into two primary sections. The first is a series of stories about Daniel which fills chapter 1-6. The second section is a series of visions that have played a role in the development of Christian history. The first vision has a character in it known as the “Son of Man.” It was Ezekiel who first introduced this phrase to our religious vocabulary. When Ezekiel used it, however, it was just a title by which God called Ezekiel, simply Ezekiel’s name. It designated him only as a human being. It had no divine connotations. When Jesus used that title many years later, however, it had a much more dramatic meaning. It was in fact a claim of divinity. That title had to have made quite a journey for its meaning to have been transformed that dramatically from Ezekiel to Jesus. It did, and it was in one of the visions of Daniel that it was transformed. “Son of Man” in Daniel was the name of an apocalyptic supernatural divine figure who would usher in the Kingdom of God and put an end to the persecution of the faithful. The “Son of Man” in Daniel traveled on the clouds of heaven and was given dominion, glory and kingship. All the nations of the world would serve him. His throne would be everlasting and of his kingdom there would be no end. We become aware, when we read the New Testament, that these images were attached to the Jesus story, first by Matthew in his parable of the Judgment, when the Son of Man will separate the sheep from the goats and, second, in Matthew’s account of Jesus appearing as the resurrected one to the disciples out of the sky on a mountain top in Galilee. In that narrative he came on the clouds clothed with the authority of heaven and earth to send the disciples out on a mission “to all the world.” Luke also borrows Daniel’s imagery when he told the story of Jesus’ ascension.
Daniel was also a pivotal book in the Jewish development of ideas about life after death. In the last chapter of Daniel the author refers to the time at the end of the world when the great deliverance would come. “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth,” says Daniel, “shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting shame and contempt.” Reward and punishment from this time on became the major feature of life after death.
Prior to the 2nd century BCE, the Jewish people spoke little about life after death. The only concept generally abroad was that of “Sheol.” Sheol was located in the “middle of the earth.” It was not a place of reward or punishment, it was simply the abode of the dead. No one looked forward to it. No one was comforted by it. Everyone who died went to it. If it was described at all, it was described as shadowy or as shades of life, ghostlike with no sense of joy.
When Daniel was written, however, religious persecution against the Jews had reached horrendous proportions. The Jews were forced by their enemies to eat food they regarded as unclean. The Temple was itself polluted with the installation of the head of a swine in the “Holy of Holies,” an unclean animal in the very dwelling place of God. The Jews called it “the abomination of desolation.” Those Jews who refused to violate their religious practices were summarily executed. The book we call II Macabees, written at the same time the book of Daniel was written, tells the story of seven brothers who, along with their mother, were arrested and were compelled to eat the flesh of a swine. The oldest brother refused and his tongue was cut out. Then he was scalped and his hands and feet were chopped off. Finally, he was taken, still breathing, to a fire and burned up. With this vision still vivid, the next brother was told he should eat the flesh of the swine or suffer the same fate. He refused and was similarly disposed of. This procedure continued until all seven brothers had been murdered. Then the mother died. It is a dreadful story.
That story, however, became a powerful instrument in giving birth to a new concept and a new passion among the Jews for life after death. That is what finds expression in the 12th and final chapter of Daniel. The driving theme was that without life after death for these faithful martyrs the very justice of God was at stake. If faithfulness to God is not rewarded beyond this life then God cannot be just. Then evil does in fact triumph over God. So heaven and hell became the categories of divine justice and the afterlife was employed to make fair this unfair world. The book of Daniel was pivotal in this transformation and, as such, exercised an enormous influence on the development of Christianity as the afterlife became crucial to the human sense of justice in both the crucifixion of Jesus and the later persecution of the Christians in loyalty to their Christ. The Book of Daniel is not a profound book, but one wonders what Christianity might have looked like if it had not been for this book. For me, however, to think of the afterlife as a place of reward or punishment distorts that concept completely. That, however, is the subject for a future column, perhaps a future book.~ John Shelby Spong |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Announcements
Citizen Discourse’s Conscious Culture
& Active Listening Workshop SeriesIn commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s belief in the power of dialogue and the 40 Days of Peace, the Charter for Compassion is offering Citizen Discourse’s Conscious Culture & Active Listening Workshop Series, Online February 12, 19 and 26, 9 am Pacific time. READ ON ... |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1
0
from Eva (Stock Neszpaul):
Thank you everyone, for your prayers, encouragement and words of comfort. You are brilliant, God- loving and God -loved friends/family who are a testament to the fact that life is indeed good- no matter our setbacks and sufferings. Your selfless support has meant everything to us Stocks. As you pray for us, our prayers are with you as well.
Love, healing, and blessed because you are in our lives and a part of this world,Eva
P.S. "Our strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord."
1
0
1/23/20, Progressing Spirit: Matthew Sydal: Christian Imagination and the Return to Myth; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 23 Jan '20
by Ellie Stock 23 Jan '20
23 Jan '20
#yiv7491073994 p{ margin:10px 0;padding:0;} #yiv7491073994 table{ border-collapse:collapse;} #yiv7491073994 h1, #yiv7491073994 h2, #yiv7491073994 h3, #yiv7491073994 h4, #yiv7491073994 h5, #yiv7491073994 h6{ display:block;margin:0;padding:0;} #yiv7491073994 img, #yiv7491073994 a img{ border:0;height:auto;outline:none;text-decoration:none;} #yiv7491073994 body, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994bodyTable, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994bodyCell{ min-height:100%;margin:0;padding:0;width:100%;} #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnPreviewText{ display:none !important;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994outlook a{ padding:0;} #yiv7491073994 img{ } #yiv7491073994 table{ } #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994ReadMsgBody{ width:100%;} #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994ExternalClass{ width:100%;} #yiv7491073994 p, #yiv7491073994 a, #yiv7491073994 li, #yiv7491073994 td, #yiv7491073994 blockquote{ } #yiv7491073994 a .filtered99999 , #yiv7491073994 a .filtered99999 { color:inherit;cursor:default;text-decoration:none;} #yiv7491073994 p, #yiv7491073994 a, #yiv7491073994 li, #yiv7491073994 td, #yiv7491073994 body, #yiv7491073994 table, #yiv7491073994 blockquote{ } #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994ExternalClass, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994ExternalClass p, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994ExternalClass td, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994ExternalClass div, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994ExternalClass span, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994ExternalClass font{ line-height:100%;} #yiv7491073994 a .filtered99999 { color:inherit !important;text-decoration:none !important;font-size:inherit !important;font-family:inherit !important;font-weight:inherit !important;line-height:inherit !important;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994bodyCell{ padding:10px;} #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994templateContainer{ max-width:600px !important;border:5px solid #363232;} #yiv7491073994 a.yiv7491073994mcnButton{ display:block;} #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImage, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnRetinaImage{ vertical-align:bottom;} #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent{ } #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent img{ height:auto !important;} #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnDividerBlock{ !important;} #yiv7491073994 body, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994bodyTable{ } #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994bodyCell{ border-top:0;} #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994templateContainer{ border:5px solid #363232;} #yiv7491073994 h1{ color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:26px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;} #yiv7491073994 h2{ color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:22px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;} #yiv7491073994 h3{ color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:20px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;} #yiv7491073994 h4{ color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-weight:bold;line-height:125%;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templatePreheader{ background-color:#FAFAFA;background-image:none;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center;background-size:cover;border-top:0;border-bottom:0;padding-top:9px;padding-bottom:9px;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templatePreheader .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templatePreheader .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p{ color:#656565;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templatePreheader .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent a, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templatePreheader .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p a{ color:#656565;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateHeader{ background-color:#FFFFFF;background-image:none;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center;background-size:cover;border-top:0;border-bottom:0;padding-top:9px;padding-bottom:0;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateHeader .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateHeader .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p{ color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateHeader .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent a, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateHeader .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p a{ color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateBody{ background-color:#FFFFFF;background-image:none;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center;background-size:cover;border-top:0;border-bottom:2px solid #EAEAEA;padding-top:0;padding-bottom:9px;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateBody .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateBody .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p{ color:#202020;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:16px;line-height:150%;text-align:left;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateBody .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent a, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateBody .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p a{ color:#007C89;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateFooter{ background-color:#FAFAFA;background-image:none;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:center;background-size:cover;border-top:0;border-bottom:0;padding-top:9px;padding-bottom:9px;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateFooter .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateFooter .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p{ color:#656565;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;line-height:150%;text-align:center;} #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateFooter .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent a, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateFooter .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p a{ color:#656565;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:underline;} @media only screen and (min-width:768px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994templateContainer{ width:600px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 body, #yiv7491073994 table, #yiv7491073994 td, #yiv7491073994 p, #yiv7491073994 a, #yiv7491073994 li, #yiv7491073994 blockquote{ } }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 body{ width:100% !important;min-width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994bodyCell{ padding-top:10px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnRetinaImage{ max-width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImage{ width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnCartContainer, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnCaptionTopContent, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnRecContentContainer, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnCaptionBottomContent, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnTextContentContainer, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnBoxedTextContentContainer, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImageGroupContentContainer, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnCaptionLeftTextContentContainer, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnCaptionRightTextContentContainer, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnCaptionLeftImageContentContainer, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnCaptionRightImageContentContainer, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImageCardLeftTextContentContainer, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImageCardRightTextContentContainer, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImageCardLeftImageContentContainer, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImageCardRightImageContentContainer{ max-width:100% !important;width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnBoxedTextContentContainer{ min-width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImageGroupContent{ padding:9px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnCaptionLeftContentOuter .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnCaptionRightContentOuter .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent{ padding-top:9px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImageCardTopImageContent, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnCaptionBottomContent:last-child .yiv7491073994mcnCaptionBottomImageContent, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnCaptionBlockInner .yiv7491073994mcnCaptionTopContent:last-child .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent{ padding-top:18px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImageCardBottomImageContent{ padding-bottom:9px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImageGroupBlockInner{ padding-top:0 !important;padding-bottom:0 !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImageGroupBlockOuter{ padding-top:9px !important;padding-bottom:9px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnBoxedTextContentColumn{ padding-right:18px !important;padding-left:18px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImageCardLeftImageContent, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnImageCardRightImageContent{ padding-right:18px !important;padding-bottom:0 !important;padding-left:18px !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcpreview-image-uploader{ display:none !important;width:100% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 h1{ font-size:22px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 h2{ font-size:20px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 h3{ font-size:18px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 h4{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent, #yiv7491073994 .yiv7491073994mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templatePreheader{ display:block !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templatePreheader .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templatePreheader .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateHeader .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateHeader .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateBody .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateBody .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateFooter .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent, #yiv7491073994 #yiv7491073994templateFooter .yiv7491073994mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } Myth is the foundation of life.
|
|
|
| View this email in your browser |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Christian Imagination and the Return to Myth
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| Essay by Rev. Matthew Syrdal
January 23, 2020
“Myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless pattern, the religious formula to which life shapes itself… Whereas in the life of mankind the mythical represents an early and primitive stage, in the life of an individual it represents a late and mature one.” - Thomas Mann
As a boy of ten, I will always remember a sacred encounter with a large male orca, the elder of its pod, breaching right off the starboard side of our boat on a summer trip with my family. Its six foot tall dorsal fin rising silently, then descending, splitting the black surface of the body of the Salish Sea mere meters from my elated wind-drowned shouts. As this numinous image plunged back into the mysterious depths of my memory, it left an indelible mark on my soul — a wake of wildness rippling through the coastlands of my ripening identity — like a story that was waiting to be overheard so that it might one day be spoken in human tongue.
Childhood numinous experiences connect the outer wildness of an untamed world, teeming with the wondrous treasures of biodiversity, with our own inner wildness. A wildness that both mirrors, and is mirrored by, the deep world itself. Children who are raised with free time in nature exploring the outdoors will learn the magic of kinship with the more-than-human world. Our childhood imaginations effortlessly absorb whispers from this living world untamed by culture, untainted by the concerns and projects of our ‘civilized’ world.
>From my early childhood experiences of the totemic imagery of native Pacific Northwest coastal tribes, and from their diverse stories, I have always been drawn to myth. Throughout history, myth has functioned to help humans remember who we are in relation to a whole ecology of place. Our storied relationship within the intricate and delicate web of the more-than-human world — with the wild itself. The ‘wild’ is that which is pure, uncontrolled, unmanaged, untamed nature. By wildness we might assume there is something inherent in all natural systems: an original, primordial wisdom, a deeper pattern, or blueprint, in all earth processes, bioregions and species — including the human — moving towards some mysterious, yet wild, equilibrium. From our own creation accounts in Genesis and the prologue to John’s gospel, we find an indigenous sophia-logos that is both evocative and liturgical. In the beginning was the speech, the singing, the courtship.
This living Mystery and Myth of our origins, it seems, is coded into our cellular memory—our bodies, our DNA—by way of image and archetype. These basic universal energetic patterns appear in myths across all cultures and languages. It seems to me that over the centuries, theology and doctrine have domesticated and deadened our attunement to the poetic and mythic that since the beginning is even now creating worlds full of astonishing beauty and meaning. To be fully human, that is, to follow the path of individual maturation—our own ontogeny as a species—is to become allured by the deeper mysteries of nature and the soul. It is to be summoned on a dangerous quest to find, what Jesus cryptically referred to as, the kingdom hidden like treasure in the field. This quest is the journey of individuation coded into the mythic structure of Jesus’ parables and actions.
There is a certain image or energy latent in each of us, conjured by crisis, loss, or maturation, alluring us into the dismemberment and darkness we previously denied and avoided in the ‘first half’ of our lives. As Sanford writes, “There is an inner reality within each of us that is like a great treasure lying hidden in the field of our soul waiting to be discovered. (John Sanford, Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language)” When we finally find this inner treasure, and recognizes its supreme value, with wild joy we will give up all other goals and ambitions in order to make it real in our lives.
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in the field. When someone found it,
in their joy they hid it again, and then went away and sold everything they had
to buy that field.”
“Losing,” “searching” and “finding” are symbolic themes that create a dreamlike thread running through many of Jesus’ parables. Dreams of becoming lost, losing car keys, searching for spouse or children, are common themes for many of us. The parables of the Treasure in the field and the Pearl of great price form one unit that function to amplify the meaning of each other. (Matthew 13:44-46) In the first parable of the Treasure hidden in the field, the “kingdom” is a treasure that we must search for and find. In the very next parable, which amplifies the first, the kingdom is compared to a merchant who is searching for something of great value. In this parable of the Pearl of great price, we are the pearl, we are the treasure found by the kingdom of heaven.
I believe the paradox of this parable lies at the heart of the split in the West from the realm of nature and the soul, the kingdom. The kingdom is both that which we find within, the inner treasure of our true Life, and also that which is searching to find us. The kingdom is a living reality—it is what I call, the Deep World. Sanford says, when we are found we become something of “supreme value in the eyes of God. We are the fine pearls if the kingdom can take root within us, and to us God gives a place of supreme value in his creation. (Sanford, Dreams)”
As an indigenous Messiah, Jesus was one who listened deeply to the song of Creation, to the living dialogue that is in the beginning, the heartbeat of the universe itself. In this sense, Jesus was the mythteller of the community he was forming around his own ministry of power, healing, and renewal. His parables of the kingdom of heaven are stories that have always existed, in the soul of the world, waiting to be heard, ‘whoever has ears, let them hear.’”
As I have written in a previous article Rewilding Our Narrative, “The key to our uniquely human role as homo poeta, in the evolution of the universe seems to be in the power of our story-telling, meaning-making in the cultivation of the world — the power to tell ourselves stories about who we are, and what we really are, our ultimate place in the world.” In the beginning was the Logos, the Speech, the Singing, the living Story actively creating meaning and life itself. Myth is the ecology of the soul and the world itself. As Sean Kane explains, “myth is in effect a whole ecology holding itself in place in a part of the world, and expressing itself through the storytelling of local humanity.” (Wisdom of the Mythtellers, 51) Myth in the oral form of passing on of stories from generation to generation—“take their inspiration, not from texts, temples or other monuments at the center of the human effort, but from the life of nature surrounding it.”
Reimagining the bounds of the ‘kingdom of heaven’ to include Earth and cosmos, body and soul, as well as spirit, requires the courage to deconstruct our cultural and anthropocentric distortions of our inherited patriarchal theology that had become severed from its rootedness in the natural world, the Creation. What is needed is a return to the primal pattern of myth, image, and imagination.
As Moses says in Deuteronomy 30 “the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it. See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction… this day I invoke the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life…” (vv. 14-19). We are at a turning point in our history where we must make a choice, and our choice affects the viability of our future as a species.
To paraphrase, language has the power to domesticate or to rewild the soul of the community and the more-than-human community. In order to restore biodiversity on our planet, and enhance life for future generations of species including our own, it is important to become educated and involved in conservation efforts. But this alone is not enough. The renewal of the Christian imagination and return to myth invites us to radically reconceive our identity and role as a species for such a time as this. We are now being called to rewild the very stories we tell ourselves about what we are and what the world is. We must reclaim the wild roots of the Christian story. We must choose to rewild the Way.
~ Rev. Matthew Syrdal
Read online here
About the Author
Rev. Matthew Syrdal M.Div., lives in the front range of Colorado with his beautiful family. Matt is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian church (USA), founder and lead guide of WilderSoul and Church of Lost Walls and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country. In his years of studying ancient Christian Rites of Initiation, world religions, anthropology, rites-of-passage and eco- psychology Matt seeks to re-wild what it means to be human. His work weaves in myth and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world in which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in the discovery of “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. Matt has been coaching, and guiding since becoming a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute and is currently training to become a soul initiation guide through the SAIP program.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Question & Answer
Q: By John
I subscribed to your messages and to expand the understanding of God through Jesus because of the open-hearted, loving messages of John Shelby Spong and several others that I had read. Lately, it seems to have many messages spewing hatred toward white, heterosexual males like me. I agree with the general premise that people who look like me have dominated and abused the world, and I am working for change much to the chagrin of many people who know me. Today’s message insists Jesus was an African, but nobody really knows. By the time he walked the earth, Jews had spread around the Mediterranean, traveled all over, and had mixed with Europeans. Yes, those horrible Europeans! Jews were taking converts from everywhere. It is unnecessary for anybody to throw stones because of anybody’s race or ethnicity. It repulses me and is plain not Jesus-like. It is prideful and hateful.
A: By Rev. Mark Sandlin
Dear John,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and concerns. I'd like to start by recognizing that, like you, I am a white, cisgendered male. I'd also like to start from a point of common agreement. As you so aptly put it, “people who look like me have dominated and abused the world.” So, right off the bat, there are a few things in common.
I can't, however, join you in the implied idea that Jesus might have been, like you and me, white (or had some “white” heritage). From a pragmatic point of view, Jesus was a Jew living in the Middle East. A particularly high percentage of the people who fit that description at that time looked like Middle Eastern Jews. That is, they had dark skin, dark hair, and brown eyes. It was so common, if Jesus had not fit that description, it most certainly would have been pointed out in the scriptures, maybe particularly by the Sadducee and Pharisees in their efforts to discredit him. There is not a reference to his possible “whiteness” in the whole of the Bible, nor in the non-canonical writings, or even in writings from outside sources of the time. Not only that, several of the earliest colored deceptions of him show him clearly with brown skin.
So, the idea that he could have been white (or had “white” heritage), while isn't completely unlikely, it is highly improbable.
The good news is that the larger overriding issue here is something that we both can (and already have) agree upon: “people who look like [us] have dominated and abused the world.” Imagine, as much as either of us can, that you aren't white. Imagine what it would feel like to be told that the son of God was much more like those who have “dominated and abused” you and your people than he is like you.
I have to believe that would be difficult, particularly when the reality is that it isn't even close to the likely reality. Consider the fact that the domination and abuse from folks who look like us frequently was backed up with scripture. I can only imagine how oppressive and subjugating it would be to also be told that the people who are doing it to you are the most like Jesus.
Now, if we'd like to stray from the likely historical reality of Jesus' heritage, I can't help but believe it would be decidedly more helpful, decidedly more Jesus-like, to consider the image of Jesus as one of the various images that white men have dominated and abused over the centuries. I'm not saying we should believe that Jesus was anything other than a Middle Eastern Jew, but I am saying it is clear that he identified more with the marginalized than with the powerful. It can be very insightful to imagine Jesus being more like those he identified with.
I actually ran into the issue of the identity of important spiritual figures while raising my kids. I have a girl and a boy. Around the age of seven or so, my daughter received a praying doll as a gift. When you placed its hands together it said the Lord's Prayer. After many nights of hearing her praying “Our FATHER, who art in heaven,” it hit me that I was reinforcing a particular view of God that isn't the only view of God in the Bible. For example, there are plenty of more feminine images in the Bible. (You can read more about all of this in my article “On a Genderqueer God”).
I also realized that in the language we were using, it was being reinforced upon my daughter that God was more like her brother than like her – and that simply isn't true. So, the next few days she and I talked about God and she came to the conclusion that from now on she'd pray the prayer saying, “Our Creator...”.
I guess what I'm saying is that it can do us and the world a lot of good to not have the only or primary image of Jesus and of God, look a whole lot like the people who “have dominated and abused the world.” It's not just helpful and healing for those who have been oppressed and subjugated, but it also can bring to those of us who live in places of comparative privilege (like male and white) spiritual insight that we could have never gained from our places of advantage in the world.
~ Rev. Mark Sandlin
Read and share online here
About the Author
Rev. Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The Associated Church Press’ Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been published on “The Huffington Post,” “Sojourners,” “Time,” “Church World Services,” and even the “Richard Dawkins Foundation.” He’s been featured on PBS’s “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” and NPR’s “The Story with Dick Gordon.” Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| 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 Bible, Part XV: Ezekiel
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
November 20, 2008
When Americans are asked to name the great presidents of this nation, four names appear more often than any others: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. The thing that each of these presidents has in common is that they presided over a time of trauma, transition and change in our nation’s history: Washington at the birth of our nation; Lincoln during the dissolution of the Union; Wilson over World War I; and Roosevelt during both the great depression and World War II. This list thus begs the question: Does the nation in crisis call forth great leaders? Or do leaders become great because they have to deal with a crisis? I suggest that it is the latter, but historians will debate that forever.
When we study the prophets, the same question arises. Does a crisis in the life of the Jewish people serve to call great people into leadership or do these leaders become great because they had to deal with a crisis? Once again I suspect it is the latter, but biblical scholars will debate this forever. There have been two great crises in Jewish history where the extinction of the whole nation was a real possibility. One was in the 20th Century when six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazi government in Germany. The other was the time of the conquest of the Jews at the hands of the Babylonians and their subsequent exile in the land of Babylon.
The crisis in the 20th Century called David Ben-Gurion into leadership. The earlier biblical crisis, occurring in the first half of the 6th Century BC, called the Prophet Ezekiel into leadership. This week in our series on the origins of the Bible we turn to a consideration of this great figure upon whom the continuation of the Jewish nation literally hung. The book of Ezekiel is the third of the “Major Prophets”. We have looked already at the first two, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Ezekiel is probably not as well-known as these, but perhaps he should be. His star still burns brightly in the Jewish diadem as a critical life in Jewish history.
It is hard to recreate the person Ezekiel from the text of the book that bears his name, since we now know that the text has been edited a number of times, corrupted badly and even that chapters 40 to 48 are generally regarded as a later addition to this text by another author, a kind of II Ezekiel. Yet there is a real figure who stands in the shadows behind the words of this book, one who lived in history and who changed the character of the Jewish people. Since his life overlapped with Jeremiah they shared some common background. Let me review it. In the late 8th Century BC, the nation of Assyria was the scourge of the Middle Eastern world. They had a disciplined and fierce military establishment. The first nation to develop horse-drawn iron chariots, the precursor of tank divisions, to hurl into battle, they destroyed their enemies on every side. The Northern Kingdom of Israel fell to them in 721 BC and in the process, its people became known as “The Ten Lost Tribes” that today live only in mythology. The fate of these Jews in defeat was to be removed from their land, resettled across the Assyrian Empire and ultimately to disappear in to the DNA and gene pool of the Arab-Semitic world. The Southern kingdom of Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, survived this scourge by becoming a vassal state of Assyria, who then ruled that world with an iron fist until falling to the rising power of Babylon in 612 BC. After a period of consolidating their power, the army of the Babylonians swept down on and destroyed Judah and Jerusalem in 596 BC. This was the first time the city of Jerusalem had been conquered in 400 years. For the “Holy City”, believed by the Jews to be the dwelling place of God, to fall was devastating. Leading Jewish citizens were then rounded up and marched off to Babylon to be resettled as an underclass in the service of their conquerors. They appeared destined to disappear as the Northern Kingdom had done about 125 years earlier. Among those exiles, however, was a young prophet whose name was Ezekiel, who was apparently a member of a well-respected priestly family. In that crisis this young man rose to become a determinative leader of his people.
The first problem to be faced in the exile was that of survival as an identifiable people. What could keep these exiled people intact and separate, the bearers in history of a national destiny? Even if they never saw their homeland again, they had to create the desire in their descendants to do so. The fate of the Jews of the Northern Kingdom must not be allowed to be the fate of these Jews. Ezekiel saw that as his primary task. This man was a psychiatrist’s delight. He had vivid dreams, perhaps even in Technicolor, which he used to galvanize his people. Two of his dreams made such indelible impressions on future generations that they have been turned into Negro spirituals and used to illumine the black experience of being first exiled from their native Africa and second being enslaved by their white oppressors. The first of these spirituals was based on the first chapter of Ezekiel and proclaimed that “Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the air”, words that expressed a yearning for deliverance to come from on high. The second, based on Ezekiel 37 was entitled “Dem bones gonna rise again”. In this dream, Ezekiel saw the Jewish nation under the analogy of a valley filled with dead, dry, fleshless bones. There was no hope of restoration or resurrection. God speaks to Ezekiel in this dream, addressing him by his
favorite title, “Son of Man”, to ask: “Can these bones live again?” To which Ezekiel replied, “Lord, only thou knowest!” Hope for a future life for the Jewish nation was at that time beyond Ezekiel’s imagination. Behind both of these dreams was the biblical idea that God was the source of life.
In the Jewish myth of creation, it was the breath of God that was breathed into Adam, transforming him from being an inert body of clay into a God-infused living soul. God’s breath had also been identified in the Jewish tradition with the wind that animated the forest. Now, Ezekiel’s dream proclaimed, the breath of God also has the ability to recreate the lifeless Jewish nation. So it was that in Ezekiel’s dream the breath of God blew over that valley and caused those dead bones to be reassembled. That is, “the toe bone connected to the foot bone, the foot bone connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone to the leg bone” until they were all standing up again. The Jewish nation was destined to be revived with the life force, the breath of God. That dream now became Ezekiel’s task to fulfill. Of course it was a task that no one person could accomplish on his or her own. It would indeed be the task of several generations. One person, however, had to have the dream, see the vision, stamp it on the minds of his people and turn it into a reality. That person was Ezekiel.
The exiled people under Ezekiel’s influence made separation, which was the prerequisite to survival, their highest priority. In three distinct ways they set out on a national agenda to make themselves different, to keep themselves separate and to maintain their Jewish identity. Firstly, they resurrected the ancient Sabbath Day observance, a tradition that had long ago fallen into disuse. They codified every detail of the Sabbath. Jews not only refrained from work on that day, they even immobilized themselves. A Sabbath Day’s journey was defined as three-fifths of a mile. No Jew could walk more than that on the Sabbath without violating the law. These Jews were “different” and “separate” and to remain so they made these Sabbath Day observances the very mark of their Judaism. This was the time when the seven-day creation story with which the Bible now opens was written and added to their sacred text. Its purpose was to ground the Sabbath Day observance in the act of creation as the command of God.
The second thing they did was to adopt kosher dietary laws. The Jews would not eat the flesh of swine or shellfish and Jewish food had to be prepared in kosher kitchens. So Jews never ate with Babylonians. It was, they said, the law of God, designed to keep them separate. The third thing they did was to revive the practice of circumcision that had also fallen into disuse. This meant that they literally carved into the flesh of every Jewish male the mark of Judaism, making intermarriage very difficult and enhancing separation. To ground these practices in the will of God a group of priestly writers, inspired by Ezekiel, edited the entire sacred narrative of the Jews so that these traditions were seen as unique to the entire history of their call from God to be God’s people. Thus the priestly version of the scriptures came into being.
It worked. The Jews were the only defeated and exiled people in human history to return intact to their homeland after defeat and exile to re-establish their national history. That vocation was burned deep into the Jewish psyche and would forever remain a characteristic of these people. They would need it again some 2,500 years later: in 70 AD, Jerusalem was destroyed again, this time by the Romans and the Jewish people were scattered across the face of the earth. The maps of human history contained no Jewish state from 70 until 1948, when the nation of Israel was established in accordance with the Balfour Declaration of 1917. During that exile time the Jews endured many horrors, much persecution and even the Holocaust, but the lessons of Ezekiel were too deep to be ignored and so they survived once more to return to the land of their fathers and mothers.
I do not mean to minimize the pain and dislocation that the return of the Jews to Israel and to the land of Palestine caused in 1948 and since. I do mean to suggest that a people who can maintain their national identity for almost 1900 years as a homeless people is a remarkable accomplishment. They have Ezekiel to thank for this survival.
~ John Shelby Spong
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Announcements
Trusting in Life – 2020
Online Course February 3rd - 28th
Grateful living as a valid spiritual practice opens the door to what in the Christian tradition have been called the three "Divine Virtues." They are good habits that have become second nature and connect us to the deepest reality of life, the divine spark within us. These three virtues — attitudes towards life, really — are faith, hope, and love. You find them in all religious traditions and spiritual paths. READ ON ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
1
0
Hi Folks,
Greetings from Pittsburgh where I came last night to be with Eva and family for her 1/22 surgery. However, this morning, the surgeon's office called and said, due to insurance issues (too long a story), her surgery has been rescheduled for Weds. Feb. 5--welcome to the US healthcare system. If you are someone or know someone who knows how to navigate this system, please let me know.
Thank you for your continuing thoughts, prayers, and lit candles as Eva continues to regain strength, stamina, use of her arm and hand and recover her full speech.
Will update after Feb 5.
Grace and peace,blessings and love,
Ellie :)elliestock@aol.com
2
1
21 Jan '20
Hi, Jill and Luigi, so good to hear from you. Yes, I remember our time together in Nepal. Hope you enjoy the book, and share some of your reflections with me and others. By the way, I heard from Elsa Batica, that her five copies are not for the Hubert Humphrey fellows, but for family members and friends. It is wonderful that this list serve allows us to stay in touch after many decades together and apart.
................................................................................................
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/
________________________________
From: OE <oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> on behalf of Persichetti, Luigi and Jill via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 6:03 PM
To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>
Cc: jill(a)jlpersi.com <jill(a)jlpersi.com>
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Reflections on service, life, and death
Rob,
Remembering our time together in Nepal and looking forward to reading your book. Just ordered a copy.
Thanks for keeping us apprised!
Blessings,
Jill and Luigi
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Oe List ...] Reflections on service, life, and death
From: Robertson Work via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net>>
Date: Tue, January 21, 2020 10:18 am
To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net>>,
"dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>" <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>>
Cc: Robertson Work <warkers(a)msn.com<mailto:warkers@msn.com>>
Dear colleagues,
I would like to share with you some of my reflections on, among other things, old age, sickness, and death, and would look forward to learn of your own thoughts. My just-published autobiography includes reflections on the death of my wife Mary after our 35 years together, and the deaths of my parents, and parents-in-law. Each one has its own meaning and lessons. Click below:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/robertson-work/serving-people-planet-in-mystery-lo…<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lulu.c…>
[http://static.lulu.com/browse/product_thumbnail.php?productId=24385686&reso…]<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lulu.c…>
Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love and Gratitude by Robertson Work (Paperback) - Lulu<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lulu.c…>
Buy Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love and Gratitude by Robertson Work (Paperback) online at Lulu. Visit the Lulu Marketplace for product details, ratings, and reviews.
www.lulu.com<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lulu.c…>
The book is also full of stories of global service to the "least, the lost, and the last" and to Those Who Care, when I was with the EI/ICA, UNDP, and NYU, and shares some of my reflections on commitment, joy, and sorrow, as I try to be of service to people and planet. It also contains my vision of what is needed at this critical moment in history and how we can participate in bending history.
For the next four days, there is a 40% discount offered on Lulu Publishing. Please click on the URL box above to be taken there.
I look forward to hear from you.
In mystery, love, and gratitude,
Rob
................................................................................................
New book (2020): Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love, and Gratitude https://www.amazon.com/dp/1684716160<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…>
Previous book (2017): A Compassionate Civilization: The Urgency of Sustainable Development and Mindful Activism https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546972617<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…>
Blog: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcompassio…><https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcompassio…><https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcompassio…>
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsonwork/<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linke…>
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/compassionatecivilization/<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.faceb…>
________________________________
_______________________________________________
OE mailing list
OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:OE@lists.wedgeblade.net>
http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.wedg…>
1
0