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6/27/13, Spong: My Mentors, Part 5 - Richard Henry Baker
by Ellie Stock 27 Jun '13

27 Jun '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR My Mentors, Part 5 Richard Henry Baker He may have had fewer obvious gifts than any person I ever watched in a position of significant power and authority. He was not an impressive personality. One would describe him more as homespun than as notable. He was more like a favorite uncle or a comfortable neighbor. He was not particularly tall, perhaps stretching to five feet and nine inches. What one noticed at first about him was that he walked with a slight limp, the result of a World War I injury. He had little oratorical power. It would not occur to most people to want to listen to a speech he might deliver. The public speaking required of him in his profession was experienced by him as a chore. He did it, but he did it rather poorly. Audiences were seldom moved; endured would be the word they would have used. He had few administrative skills and was looked upon as one who was never quite organized. On more than one occasion, enough to form a pattern in the minds of some, he got his schedule confused and showed up at the wrong place on the wrong date and at the wrong time. He ran his organization as if it were a family, feeling it was everyone’s duty to bear one another’s burden. That of course could not be done unless people’s burdens were well known. He was not malevolent, but confidentiality was not his strong suit. He frequently sought to encourage one person by telling him or her about another person, who had confided in him and who, in his opinion, had much the same problem. I do not mean to be critical, but to be descriptive. This man, now deceased, was a bishop, elected bishop-coadjutor of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina in 1950 and succeeding to the diocesan bishop’s office in 1959. He filled that office until 1965, not a long term as those things are normally measured. He ordained me deacon on June 24, 1955. Today I regard him as the most influential bishop under whom I ever served. His name was Richard Henry Baker and he helped me understand the complex nature of effective leadership. He modeled a leadership style that is absolutely unique. So let me tell you the story of my fifth great mentor and, in the process, help you, my readers, to understand that genius comes in many forms. Richard Henry Baker came to the Episcopal office after a long rectorship at the Church of the Redeemer in a rather fancy suburb of Baltimore, Maryland. When he went there in the early1930’s, Redeemer was a little country church, well suited to Dick Baker’s informal, one on one, personal style. Prior to and following World War II, however, the suburbs around the great cities of America exploded. Great farms were carved into beautiful sculptured lots, roads were paved, trees were planted, homes were built and shopping malls were erected. The face of America was dramatically changed and the little Church of the Redeemer in Baltimore County evolved into a large, wealthy and influential suburban church. Its rector, Richard Baker, grew with them. He was there for so long that children he had known in the Sunday school and various youth groups left home for universities and graduate schools, got married, began their families and then returned to the neighborhood and the church of their upbringing, but now as admired, successful professionals. They were among Baltimore’s leading citizens. Many were doctors whose careers at Johns Hopkins Medical School and Hospital achieved national recognition, but they were still known to Richard Baker as little Earl or little Billy. The Church of the Redeemer expanded its physical facilities time after time to accommodate its growing congregation. The staff at this church also grew to meet this congregation’s expanding needs. At this faith community’s center, however, was still this simple man who knew everyone and who was, it seems, loved by all. No one expected him to be what he was not. Everyone was quite pleased that everything was changing except Dick Baker. He was an anchor in a swirling sea. His Sunday sermons were brief and practical. No one would mistake him for a scholar. As a pastor he was more an advice giver than a skilled counselor. He was a comfortable part of the furniture at this increasingly affluent and dominating congregation. Meanwhile, in the Diocese of North Carolina, the bishop, whose name was Edwin Anderson Penick, was approaching the mandatory retirement age of 72. He had been elected bishop when he was only 35. Most of the people in that diocese had never known anyone else in that office. He also filled that office magnificently. He was a powerful speaker, a respected intellect and a master administrator. He was known as “Prince Bishop,” a larger than life ecclesiastical figure. He was accorded honor and status in whatever setting he entered. When the time came to choose his successor, it was clear that the diocese wanted someone just like him. The nominees were of that mold. One was the dean of an Episcopal theological seminary, a scholar, a published author and one whose skills in leading clergy were already established. Another, the rector of a large Virginia Church, who bore a name that reflected the ancestry of Virginia’s landed gentry, combining in his three names three distinguished Virginia family lines. To speak his full name was like a roll call of the “first families of Virginia.” The third nominee was a rector of a large church in Richmond, Virginia, a city that, probably more than any other, gloried in its history. Anyone of these would have been a fitting successor to Bishop Penick. The election convention got off to an interesting start when a North Carolina lay delegate extolled the virtues of the man with three noble Virginia names a bit too effusively, dwelling on the history of his three distinguished family lines. The next speaker, put off by this excessive tribute to blue blood, asked if we were interested in this man as our next bishop or were we bringing him to North Carolina for breeding purposes? The Virginia blue blood never had a chance after that. So the seminary dean was elected and the people felt good about their choice. The Dean, however, declined his election, an action that stunned the people of North Carolina and deflated their corporate egos. A year later, another convention was called and Richard Henry Baker of Baltimore, Maryland, was chosen. The contrast could not have been more severe. The Diocese of North Carolina had turned to a man beloved in his community because he had been there for so long and they had thrust this wonderful, but limited man into a position of great power and influence to succeed an icon of respect and effectiveness. When Dick Baker began to be known in North Carolina, a sense of despair about the future of the diocese became palpable. How will we manage when this man takes over it was asked? It was a fair question. It is said of bishops that upon election, they either grow or swell. Bishop Baker did neither. His great gift was that he knew who he was and he made no effort to become anything else. He certainly did not swell. He sat loosely to authority. He elicited gifts from others that he did not have. Some of North Carolina’s top business leaders, fearing that the diocese was in poor hands with this bishop, volunteered their services, taking over the business and financial leadership of the diocese. Senior clergy ceased to be parochial in their outlook and began to give this bishop the best leadership they had to offer. Bishop Baker kept delegating his authority to clergy whom most regarded as too young to be effective leaders and then he watched them grow. He trusted others to provide him with the talent he knew he did not possess. He empowered congregations and clergy to risk in dramatic ways. In 1959 when a group of young clergy simply closed the segregated camp the diocese had operated for “colored Episcopalians,” deciding that the one diocesan camp, known as Vade Mecum, would serve all the children of the diocese, Bishop Baker approved that decision without hesitation and rode out the storm that ensued among North Carolina’s “old white establishment” with a serenity that was impressive.. He never wavered and the attempt to overturn that decision made by those “young upstarts” failed because this bishop exercised veto power. Another young priest, not five years out of seminary, became chair of the prestigious “State of the Diocese” committee, empowered to bring sweeping recommendations to the convention about future policy. Bishop Baker did not flinch when one of those recommendations was to close a hospital in Charlotte that it had run for years for “colored people,” thus forcing the city to provide public tax-supported medical care to blacks and whites alike. Bishop Baker empowered the clergy of his diocese to grow into who they were capable of being. He asked others to give gifts of leadership that he knew he himself did not possess. That was and is a tremendous gift of leadership. People today look back on that period of church history in North Carolina with some sense of wonder. It was a time of intense conflict over race and the role of women in the church. It was an era when angry people withheld their money from the church as a weapon to keep control and when congregations voted to withdraw from the Episcopal Church in order to keep their prejudices intact. In retrospect people were heard to say such things as “The Diocese of North Carolina got through those difficult days in spite of having such a weak man in the bishop’s office.” How wrong they were. We got through those days because we did have Dick Baker in the bishop’s office. Today I am aware of the contributions that clergy developed under Dick Baker have made in the larger Church. They have become bishops, deans and rectors of some of America’s greatest congregations. One founded the Alban Institute, many were active in the Civil Rights movement, the movement for women’s equality in church and society and the movement for justice and full acceptance of the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender community. They are the results of the ministry of Richard Henry Baker, who assessing his weaknesses accurately, called many more into being something they did not know that they had the ability to be. I salute him as one of the great mentors of my life. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Dr. Franklin Woo, of California writes: Question: I have been following your work for many years, especially when we were living in New York Now in retirement in California, I found your book A New Christianity for a New World most helpful, as if tailor made to fit my needs. Before retirement, I had essentiality two roles: one of chaplain and lecturer in religion at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (1965-1976) and director of the Chinese Program, National Churches of Christ in the USA (1976-1993). Experiences in these two roles have sealed my definition as a bi-cultural person with dual belongings in value systems of both Chinese traditions and Christianity, despite the fact that I was born in the U.S. (San Francisco Chinatown). In Hong Kong and Asia, I learned so much about Chinese and East Asian traditions, especially from students, colleagues and other faculty members. I was very much attracted to the best in the Confucian tradition, especially “Neo-Confucianism,” after classical Confucianism had interacted for centuries with native Daoism and Indic Buddhism to become a more inclusive system that embodies nature and the cosmos. While in New York, I attended monthly Neo-Confucian seminars at Columbia University, where professors from colleges and universities of the Atlantic seaboard did rigorous exegesis of ancient texts, the envy of Christian scholars. In retirement I still worship regularly with my wife in a local Presbyterian congregation for the sake of discipline and community, although all of my work has been in ecumenical contexts. I have found Christian worship, however, to be essentially boring banality. Its confession and absolution are too facile, not to mention that my sins are much more sophisticated than what the superficiality of the confession texts state. Maybe this is all as you mentioned in your book, “familiarity breeds contempt.” I actually resonated well with your quote of Bonhoeffer in the Preface, especially “Before God and with God we live without God.” Your liberating of Christianity from theism has enabled faith for me to converge more directly with so much in the Chinese and East Asian traditions. My first encounter with ridding the supernatural from Christianity was from David Ray Griffin’s book: Reechantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion (Cornell University Press, 2001). His rigorous and specific critique really did it for me. Your intellectual honesty (a la John A. T. Robinson) resonates well with the best in Neo-Confucian fundamentalism, which is the fundamental commitment to the human discourse. Your beginning with the dawn of humanity’s consciousness and the struggle for survival reminded me of Robert N. Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Harvard 2011), an interreligious work which took Bellah 15 years to write after retirement. The 746 pages appear to be his reading notes to himself. Your stating that the description of religious experience can never encompass the entirety of that experience resonates well with the Daoist claim that all articulations of experience, if absolutized, can be “an idolatry of words.” Your Christianity of expansion into larger and larger realms of exclusivity resonates with the best of the Confucian paradigm of each person being a center of relationship from family, to community, to society, to nation, to world, to the cosmos (ping tian xia) “all under heaven.” Your integrating good and evil is likened to the Daoist yin-yang, where everything in life is seen an interconnected. There is no facile isolating of that which is “evil,” since every person is a combination of many facets of personhood. There is little dichotomy in Daosim; life and death are one. Your idea of giving away self and love resonates well with Buddhist non-attachment to things, to loved ones, to life, even one’s own. It is the art of letting go in both Christian and Buddhist kenosis, though the latter has made it a vocation. Your emphasis on the imperative of community is also central to Confucianism where to be human requires at least two; no one is an atomistic individual. In retirement I have been trying to stay intellectually alive by reviewing books for an academic journal, China Review International, Center for Chinese Studies, University of Hawaii. To date they have published close to 70 of my reviews since 1995. Thank you for answering one of my most fundamental questions by demythologizing the notion of a theist parent/fixer, alleviating us of all responsibility. Answer: Dear Franklin, Thank you for your incredible letter and for your permission to reprint it in my column. I think it gives my readers a sense of how rich a cross-cultural religious experience can be. I have gained much from my dialogues with Hindus in India, Buddhists in China, Jews and Muslims in the USA. Perhaps we can get our churches to work on their prayers of confession so that they can be developed to cover “the sophistication” of your sins. I like that idea! I would love to meet you someday. John Shelby Spong Announcements Happy Summer! “And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth, 'You owe me.' Look what happens with love like that. It lights up the sky.” ~Rumi We hope this finds you well and enjoying these days as the sun graces us. Soon we will head back into shorter days and longer nights...but it is our love that can light up the sky. This month's free eBulletin from ProgressiveChristianity.org was all about children. It is full of resources to guide children on a compassionate and wonder-filled path. Check it out here if you missed it! Are you looking for people or faith communities in your area? Search our Global Network Directory for community near you. May your days be filled with laughter, light and delight! ~The team at ProgressiveChristianity.org Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Unit 1 Portland, OR 97214 Add us to your address book

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Some thoughts about the future
by Herman Greene 24 Jun '13

24 Jun '13

Dear All, This is an important email for me, though it will not be for each of you. It is one I have thought about for months, especially since returning from a visit in ICA headquarters in Chicago in September 2012. I made that trip because I was going to be able to meet with Jack Gilles, who was at ICA working on the archives project. I was also looking forward to meeting with Pam and Terry Bergdall again. The event turned out to be overwhelming for me, in part because of the profound memories that welled up within me, in part because of the conversations Jack and I had and the picture he presented of the EI/ICA archive (which brought down the full breadth of our legacy on me), and in part because I really realized that the big corporate body that constituted EI/ICA was gone. I left the Order in 1975 and didn’t come back into contact with Order folk until the Millennium Conference in 2000. I have had four or five occasions since then to be in Chicago or at a Springboard gathering. I have been on the OE listserve for some time and on the ICA Dialogue listserve for a year. Nelson and Elaine Stover and John Cock live nearby and I have been in contact with them and colleagues who live in Asheville. The eight years I was in the Order from 1967-75 shaped my life dramatically, but for the most part my development since 1975 has taken place apart from EC/ICA. There have been several key influences on me and I will name three: Thomas Berry, Alfred North Whitehead (and the International Process Network), and the practice of business law. EI didn’t help me at all with the overwhelming task I was given growing up as a Southern Baptist, which was to save the world. I have learned though to balance this calling to make my life count with humility and self-care. The basic impulse and teaching of EI is however still strong within me and indeed is what leads to this email. There is much to be written, but to write much at this point I feel is a mistake because what is involved is not for me alone to articulate or determine. It is a part of a conversation that has been going on some time and it has to do with what we who have been a part of EI/ICA can contribute to our time. The subject does not directly concern ICA US or any ICA organization as an institution, though it is not irrelevant to any of them either. Let me start with the easiest issue, our listserves, then go to a particular project, then to the legacy of EI/ICA. *1. **The Listserves. *This will border on a gripe. I initially joined the OE listserv to reconnect with my family/friends. Folks, you are still the closest friends I have. I use friends with the knowledgeable awareness that we were and are colleagues first and friends second, but that latter part seems increasingly important. After going to Oklahoma City a couple of years ago and meeting with David Dunn, I eventually asked to be added to the ICA listserve. I thought I would be in a network of a whole different group of people. To my surprise I found out that it was by and large the same group of people. I don’t have any recommendation about the two existing listserves except they are puzzling to me because I honestly don’t see the difference. The time has passed, however, when I will do anything other than read emails that stick out for me. I just can’t keep up and it raises the question for me, as I’m sure it does for many of you, about what are these listserves for. Nonetheless I keep receiving the emails because I like to at least read the titles of the various emails. I’ll basically leave this issue open, though I am considering going back to only being on the OE listserve. There may be a need for a listserve around the next topic in this email. *2. **The Project. *The way I see the world, humanity as a whole is moving from economic-industrial civilization to ecological-cultural civilization. The transition we are going through is equivalent to that which occurred with the Neolithic villages, the establishment of the classical civilizations, the Medieval/feudal period, modernity beginning in the 16th century and industrial civilization beginning in the 18th century. Agricultural civilization, which began 10,000 years ago, and industrial civilization which began 200 years ago were most fundamental. Now we are faced with converging crises (rapid in historical terms, but not as fast as many of us expect) and for the next century or so the changes will occur. The goal is not Heaven on Earth, but the more Heaven the better. Thomas Berry spoke of a “viable” human future and I like that more modest language, but he also spoke of an “ecozoic” future and the need to care for the comprehensive community of life even for the sake of the human. A set of circumstances two years ago brought me into work related to preparing for Rio+20, the third Earth Summit of the UN, which occurred last June in Rio. Before engaging I took some time to study the “sustainable development” history in relation to the UN. I came to the conclusion that this was the language on the basis of which change will occur in the next few decades if it is to occur. It is a language understood and used by all 192 member states of the UN (and no doubt those who are not members as well) is readily understood by the business community, and is well understood in civil society (there are 5,000 civil society groups with consultative status with the UN). Of course, the language itself, which I found in the UN documents produced over the last 20 years to be quite remarkable, will not bring about change in the same way that say a local village project will. What we are faced with, however, is the problem that we are in the planetary phase of human development and there are no solutions to local problems without a global shift, that is a change in the dominant mode of human civilization globally. This statement doesn’t negate the idea of “think globally and act locally,” of course that is where the dominant effort must occur. I got involved in preparation for Rio+20 with a group that was advocating for the inclusion of ethics and spirituality in the Outcome Document for the conference. The group is known as the “Ethics and Spirituality Initiative for Sustainable Development” or “ESI” for short. The simple ideas behind ESI are two: (a) if the lack of sustainable development is an ethical and spiritual problem then ethics and spirituality must have something to do with the solution, and (b) if we look only to economics and science to address the issues related to sustainable development, we will not make the needed changes. Let me illustrate what I mean on that second point by a quote from a book by Jorgen Randers, called *2052*: As a consequence of the increase in the average global temperature of plus 2 degrees Centigrade by 2052, humanity will experience an increasing number of bothersome climate effects over the decades to come. . . . Each event will lead to public outrage and create fear for the future. But in most cases the short-term costs of action will be seen as unacceptably high and lead to a “well-considered” decision to postpone significant action. Jorgen also writes of “last to lose” strategies where people will feel there is no way to control globally either resource use or demand, so their strategies will promote more economic growth to strengthen their own strategic positions and ability to strengthen their own resource bases and defenses. These strategies will only make matters worse. Do you see the ethical and spiritual problems? People will need to do the “un-well-considered,” that which in the short-term is not in conventional terms in their own best interest. Thomas Berry wrote that humans must become self-limiting. While this has been honored in spiritual traditions, it is the opposite of the march of civilization which has always been for more. He said we needed to “reinvent the human at the species level with critical reflection within the community of life systems, in a time-developmental context through story and shared dream experience.” Now I happen to feel that OE/ICA, or let me speak from my own experience, the Ecumenical Institute, as I knew it, had a lot of knowledge about how to call for, teach and prepare people for the task of large-scale change EI also knew about spiritual formation, the kind that is needed to go through challenging times and take risks. Therefore I can see the role of a pedagogical effort coming out of the historic OE/ICA community in relation to the transition from economic-industrial civilization to ecological-cultural. I can also see the remaining EI/ICA network as being helpful in this effort, and without focusing on the institutional issue, I can see how this could provide an important role for ICA. I think there is no doubt a continuing important role for village projects and local efforts such as the ones ICA US has undertaken in Chicago, but that is not the subject of this particular email. My own primary institution now is the Center for Ecozoic Societies. It is pip-squeak big. My institution, CES, and others will engage in collaborative efforts related to ESI, ESI will not be an organization in itself. We will propose various projects and then people can take them up if they wish. We had a meeting of all of 20 people in NYC on May 14 and came up with this initial list: There was a discussion of authoring a book on ESI (not what this ESI group is about, but rather a call to leaders of values-based organizations) with chapters from the people present. The book would also serve as an anchor to this movement. One common project all agreed upon was commenting collectively on the post-2015 UN development agenda. Other collaborations are possible and these were suggested at the meeting. Please add to this list:** * * · Advocating for culture/spirituality as the fourth pillar of sustainable development · Developing an educational curriculum on sustainable development for VBOs (this is to help enable people to understand how to be global citizens and the relationship of ethics, spirituality and culture to sustainable development). · Host ecological civilization conferences · Engage teams of interested persons in different regions of the world to prepare a vision and pathway to ecological civilization (the transition from economic-industrial civilization to ecological-cultural civilization) · Promote the International Ethics Panel for Ecological Civilization, Ombudsmen for Future generations, Trusteeship of the Global Commons, Office of Ethical Assessment in the UN Secretariat and other ethical structures of governance** * * · Work on the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance (contribute to the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance (WASH stands for water sanitation and hygiene), and support a similar initiative focused on energy) * * I can imagine that those who have had the training and experience I have had through OE/ICA could be very helpful in preparing and carrying out these two in particular: · Developing an educational curriculum on sustainable development for VBOs (this is to help enable people to understand how to be global citizens and the relationship of ethics, spirituality and culture to sustainable development). · Host ecological civilization conferences Another list that I want to put forward, without comment is this one: The following were identified as areas where transformational leadership is needed in books by David Orr and Paul Schafer: (i) creating a new theoretical, practical, historical and philosophical framework for the world of the future (with an emphasis on the importance of the cultural dimension of life and of strengthening this dimension); (ii) dealing with the intimate relationship between people and the natural environment, (iii) providing uncommon clarity about our best economic and energy options, (iv) helping people understand and face what will be increasingly difficult circumstances, and (v) fostering a vision of a humane and decent future. I can imagine some of you want to be involved in ESI. I can imagine a new Ecumenical or Ecozoic Institute to carry out the educational programs. I can imagine this is connected with ICA though not that ICA would have to be involved. Well, I’ve gone on longer than I thought I would. I haven’t brought this section to a conclusion, but I believe I have provided enough of a flavor for you to “get it.” I’ll be interested in what you have to say either through this listserve or by emailing me directly. *3. **The Order (or EI/ICA) Legacy. *The story of who we were needs to be told and the past needs to be preserved. I have wondered from time to time if there needs to be some kind of loose order going forward. Since I haven’t had any brilliant insights into that I am letting that ride. In some ways I would like an affiliation where I can honor my vows (the ones I took long ago in EI to poverty, chastity and obedience), but I can only presently see work in forming such an order as a distraction. It is part of our history to say that what needs to come into being must come into being around the mission and that is enough guidance for me. I am going to do this work and let the forms emerge. * * There are two troubling parts about the legacy about which I would like to speak. One is the sense that “if we only do this ___________, everything will change.” The second is the idea that everything is perfectly expressed in a model. If we are to do this work, it is necessary to let go completely of dogmatic certainty and the idea that we can make things happen. A key event in the life of the Order which I keenly remember but no one else to whom I have spoken seems to have remembered. McClesky gave a lecture on the turn to the world. He drew a football diagram on the board and talked of doing an end run around the church. He said we had a decision to make about whether we would be a force or a leaven. At the time, the notion was that we would be a force. So we mapped out the world and, being obsessed with numbers in grids, went out to change it. In this effort we can only be a leaven. Herman -- __________________________________________________ Herman F. Greene 2516 Winningham Road Chapel Hill, NC 27516 919-942-4358 (ph & fax) hfgreenenc(a)gmail.com

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SUSTAINABLE HOUSEHOLDs
by James Wiegel 22 Jun '13

22 Jun '13

Jim Wiegel here. The link below is asking for your experience and reflections on a question that has become important for me: "Based on your experience, what are the key ingredients of a truly sustainable household? -- one that fully engages its members and others in getting the "real work" of life done for all its members in a way that continually develops their capacities and gives energy to their involvement and contribution in the larger community and world of which they are a part. Thinking back to days gone by, between the notion of the "religious house" and the "missional family", we created and were sustained by some very interesting household forms. I sometimes think that the creation of those two were really the key to releasing a remarkable amount of global energy out of us. Last December, our whole family was gathered here in Arizona and I used to occasion to interview everyone in the family, down to the age of 6, asking them for their list of key ingredients for a sustainable household. Now, I would like your two cents on this. The link below will take you to a series of questions to get your current wisdom on this topic. Thanks in advance for participating. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ColleagueHouseholds Jim Wiegel "There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar. It keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor." George Santayana 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353-2401 +1 623-363-3277 skype: jfredwiegel jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com Upcoming public course opportunities: ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 17-18, 2013 ToP Strategic Planning, Nov 5-6, 2013 Facilitation Graphics, March 19, 2013 The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday of each month 1-4 pm Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Current program began on Nov 14-16, 2012 See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website for further details. AICP Planners: 14.5 CM for all ToP courses

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Trust & Manifest Your Bliss
by coevolutionacademy＠juno.com 22 Jun '13

22 Jun '13

Our book Trust & Manifest Your Bliss is out in Kindle and Paperback - in case you might like to read it. http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Manifest-Your-Bliss-Sands/dp/1484834089/ref=sr_… ;ie=UTF8&qid=1371905376&sr=1-1&keywords=Trust+%26+Manifest+Your+Bliss It's at amazon.com Two colleagues, Jack Gillis and Elsa Batica have shared their stories. Trust & Manifest Your Bliss is a motivational book full of uplifting stories from the authors and their friends. It’s entertaining as well as instructive. The stories are shared to inspire and support the reader to understand and believe the unlimited possibilities for living a creative, abundant, healthy life. Tales from real people describe manifesting prosperity, healing from terminal diseases, finding long lasting love and fulfilling partnerships, and discovering our life’s purpose, our soul’s calling. The book includes a chapter on the “how to’s” of the manifestation process. The importance of trusting and following our intuition and recognizing guidance is revealed through the experiences of the storytellers. Insights are shared as to how we block the goodness streaming to us from the Universe. The evidence is overwhelming - when we are able to overcome habit and negative conditioning and raise our vibrations to a higher level we not only transform our own life but we help to transform the world Blase and Rose Anne Sands ____________________________________________________________ BlackBerry&#174 10 Find out more about the new BlackBerry 10 smartphone. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/51c5d37fb92ec537f467fst04vuc

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The Birth of Jesus, Conclusions: Part XVI
by Ellie Stock 20 Jun '13

20 Jun '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR The Birth of Jesus, Part XVI Conclusions Luke concludes his birth story with a series of episodes designed to point to the story of the adult Jesus. First, in Luke’s story, the shepherds depart, while Mary “ponders,” then the “Holy Family” goes through the initiation rites of Judaism to root Jesus deeply inside of the faith of his people. He is circumcised, Luke says, on the eighth day and given the name Jesus (Joshua or Yeshuah in Hebrew/Aramaic). Then he is presented at the Temple on the 40th day, at which time a prophetess named Anna, later to be viewed in mythology as the mother of Mary, and an old priest named Simeon are introduced in brief cameo appearances. Simeon proclaims that in this baby he has seen the promised salvation that will bring light to the Gentiles and glory to Israel. Next, and in contrast to Matthew, who has the Holy Family flee into Egypt to avoid the wrath of Herod, Luke has them make a rather leisurely journey back to their home in Nazareth. This episode of Luke’s birth narrative is then closed with a summary statement informing his readers that “the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was with him.” This infancy narrative is thus completed. Luke then describes an episode that turns out to be the only story in the entire New Testament that purports to inform us about Jesus’ childhood. It is the narrative of the twelve year old Jesus being taken up to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover. It is a puberty rite story couched in religious terms, a kind of primitive bar mitzvah filled with familiar mythological content. It was designed to show just how remarkable the child Jesus really was long before his introduction to the wider public as an adult figure. It also has deep roots in the Hebrew Scriptures that we need to identify. Those familiar with these scriptures would also be familiar with the life of the prophet Samuel. He, like Jesus, was said to have had something of a miraculous birth. His mother Hannah was childless; she had been unable to conceive. In that patriarchal world, the woman was blamed for this condition and so she was called “barren.” She was one of two wives married to a man named Elkanah. His second wife, Peninnah, had children and was honored by her husband because of that. Hannah, however, felt shame at her inability to have a child and was even ridiculed by Peninnah because, as she said, “the Lord had closed her womb.” Hannah went up regularly to a “holy place,” the shrine at Shiloh. On one of those occasions, she was at the gate of the shrine weeping and praying for a child. In her prayers she stated her willingness to dedicate her child to God if her prayers were answered. In the emotional power of this prayer, she came to the attention of an old priest named Eli who thought at first that she was drunk. “How long will you be drunken?” he asks her as the conversation began. Hannah responded, “No, my Lord, I am a woman sorely troubled. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.” Hearing the content of her prayer, Eli promised her that her prayer would be answered. So he said to her: “Go in peace and may the God of Israel grant your petition.” Hannah then returned home and her barrenness was overcome; Samuel was born. It is a touching story. Luke is clearly familiar with the story of Hannah. When Hannah’s child, Samuel, was born, she sang a song of praise that began with the words: “My heart exults in the Lord.” Luke uses Hannah’s song as the model for the song he puts in the mouth of Mary that we call The Magnificat. The Magnificat begins with the words: “My soul magnifies the Lord.” I believe there is one other oblique reference to the story of Samuel in Luke’s birth narrative. In his genealogy of Jesus in chapter 3, Luke lists a person named Heli as the father of Joseph and thus the grandfather of Jesus. Heli is simply the Greek spelling of Eli. The old priest in the book of Samuel is thus related, Luke says, to the life of Jesus. Finally, when Mary and Joseph take the boy Jesus to present him in the Temple when he was 12 years old, Luke appears to base this story on the account of Hannah taking the boy Samuel “when he was weaned” to the shrine at Shiloh, where he would serve the priest Eli as the fulfillment of Hannah’s vow to dedicate her son, if she became pregnant with a boy, to the service of God. The visit to the Temple completed the cycle of Jewish initiatory liturgies. Jesus was, says Luke, circumcised on the 8th day, presented on the 40th day and dedicated at the age of 12 in the Temple at Jerusalem. The child Jesus was thus born with the destiny to serve God in all aspects of the Jewish tradition. This visit to the Temple at age 12 is also filled by Luke with hints of things to come. The boy Jesus claims the Temple for himself in his childhood, just as he will do later as an adult. In this episode, Jesus acknowledges God as his father, claiming this Temple “as my father’s house,” and stating that he must be about his “father’s business.” He is also in this narrative, said to have been lost “for three days” and when he was found, he was in the “my Father’s house,” revealing echoes of another three days in which Luke will say he was lost until raised by God into a new dimension of God’s presence. His body will then be referred to as the “New Temple.” It is interesting to note that Luke then moves immediately to the story of Jesus’ baptism by John in the River Jordan and the inauguration of his messianic career. Now Joseph disappears from Luke’s text and takes his place in the mythology of the ages, out of which he had come in the first place. With this story the birth narratives have completed their purpose. The meaning of Jesus’ life has been introduced to his followers. With this story we also reach the end of this series of columns, so it is time to summarize. There is nothing in the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke that was ever intended to be viewed as literal history. Both of these gospel authors knew that the birth narratives were designed to explain the source of power experienced in the adult Jesus of Nazareth. Both were trying to say that they had met a power and presence in the life of Jesus that human beings could not themselves have ever produced. Both picked symbols out of Hebrew history to flesh out their stories. Both knew that they were introducing a new idea into the developing Christian tradition. Both were surely aware that their stories of a miraculous birth for Jesus were unknown to Paul who portrayed Jesus as one who was “born of a woman,” as every human being is, and “born under the law,” as every Jew was. The only special claim Paul made for Jesus was that he “was descended from the House of David, according to the flesh.” God for Paul had declared Jesus to be the son of God, not through a miraculous birth, but through “his resurrection from the dead.” (See Romans 1:1-4). They also knew that Mark, whom both Matthew and Luke had incorporated into their gospel accounts, not only had no birth story, but he had also stated that God first entered Jesus at his baptism. Mark even portrayed Jesus’ mother as thinking that the adult Jesus was “beside himself” (see Mark 3), that is, “out of his mind,” when he came to his adult life. That is not the response of one who has been told in advance that her child will be holy, “the son of the highest.” No, both Matthew and Luke were not writing about the literal birth of Jesus. That will be the later agenda of the fundamentalists. Then we saw how these two evangelists developed their stories out of the Hebrew Scriptures. Matthew borrowed from Isaiah, who wrote of kings coming to the “brightness of God’s rising” and bringing with them “gold and frankincense,” to get his narrative of wise men and their guiding star. He adapted for his narrative of Jesus a Moses story about a wicked king who tried to destroy God’s anointed one at birth. He has Jesus repeat the life cycle of the Jewish nation by coming “out of Egypt.” He creates the character of Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, out of the account of Joseph the patriarch in the book of Genesis (37-50). The two Joseph’s are all but indistinguishable. Luke also borrows images from the Old Testament to describe the birth of John the Baptist. He lifts a story from the book of Daniel to explain how John’s father, Zechariah, got the news that he was to be a father and why he could not speak. He lifts the account of John post-menopausal birth out of the Abraham and Sarah story in the book of Genesis. He populates Bethlehem with shepherds because it was the birthplace of David, the “Shepherd King.” He borrows a text from Isaiah to get his manger and a text from the Wisdom of Solomon to get his “swaddling cloths.” Both narratives are artfully crafted pieces of haggadic Midrash. No Jewish reader would fail to notice that. The two stories are deeply contradictory if one treats them literally, but both serve as overtures to the story of the life of Jesus, introducing themes that will be developed more fully in their later gospel accounts. For most people the birth stories are probably the most familiar part of the New Testament. They are also probably the most misunderstood. They are victimized by the annual Christmas pageants held in most churches. They are distorted by hymns sung, oratorios heard and sermons preached each Christmas season. They are celebrated in lawn crèches built, Christmas cards sent and store windows dressed during the holiday season. Like all birth stories, however, they are not really about the birth of the hero, but about the adult life of the hero. Once we break them out of their literal prison, they take on a new wonder, a new meaning and a new power. That is what these 17 columns over the past two years have also been designed to do. I hope they have succeeded and that the next Christmas season can be entered with open minds and hearts and without the need to defend Jesus from those who think that the only way to be true to Jesus is to literalize the words of the New Testament. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Judith, from Atlanta writes: Question: My question to you is about a column you wrote about two years ago describing your second visit to China. Did you actually witness everything you talked about or did someone else tell you these things? The reason I’m asking is because I read/saw an article on China last year (I can’t remember the source but I think it might have been Time Magazine to which I subscribe). The article showed this beautiful modern city but there were no folks in it. The writer said the high rises and buildings were only a façade and inside many of them it was an empty shell. Since I have already jumped to conclusions, I’ll be interested in your response. Answer: Dear Judith, Yes, indeed, I wrote about things I saw and about which I had an opportunity to ask after I had seen them. I doubt if your source for the idea that China is building massive cities that will be unoccupied was Time Magazine. That is far too reputable a news source to engage in that kind of fear mongering or irrational claim. China has 1.3 billion people and the new condominiums and apartments that we saw in about ten cities are occupied immediately after construction. There have been new planned cities built from scratch to house people in towns and villages that were flooded out of their homes when the Three Gorges Dam was built. These may have remained vacant for a few days after completion until the residents in the condemned towns and villages could be moved in, but that would be as close to what you describe as I can imagine. When dealing with a rival or enemy country, I think one must always be aware of the possibility of misrepresentation for propaganda purposes or even the paranoid imagination of the unbalanced among us. Thank you for your letter. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements The Latest Book from John Shelby Spong Is Now Available! Order The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic Today! In The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic, John Shelby Spong argues that this last gospel was misinterpreted by the framers of the fourth-century creeds to be a literal account of the life of Jesus. Rescuing John’s Gospel from its creedal captivity, the author provides a unique primer about how to be a Christian in the post-Christian twenty-first century. The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic was designed first to place Jesus into the context of the Jewish scriptures, then to place him into the worship patterns of the synagogue and finally to allow him to be viewed through the lens of a popular form of first-century Jewish mysticism. The result of this intriguing study is not only to recapture the original message of this gospel, but also to provide us today with a radical new dimension to the claim that in the humanity of Jesus the reality of God has been met and engaged. Click here to read the: Preface of The Fourth Gospel- by Bishop Spong Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Unit 1 Portland, OR 97214 Add us to your address book .

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Fwd: Woodside in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong
by Martin Gilbraith (ICAI) 18 Jun '13

18 Jun '13

Hi, does anyone have recollections, phots, stories or links about Woodside or ICA Hong Kong to share? If so, please email aw2046(a)gmail.com <mailto:aw2046@gmail.com> directly, or better still please post them to the ICAI page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ICAInternational so that others can see and add to them - this is how Angel Wong contacted me with her enquiry. Please 'like' the ICAI page while you are there! thanks, best wishes, Martin -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Woodside in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:33:21 +0800 From: angel wong <aw2046(a)gmail.com> To: info(a)ica-international.org Hi, I was referred by the administrator of ICA's Facebook page to send my request here and hope could get in touch with any former colleagues of ICA in HK. I am studying in the University of HK on a master degree program on architecture conservation and is collecting information on Woodside (No. 50, Mount Parker Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong) for my thesis on its value and significance. Woodside is the last surviving colonial style house in the area, contains not only the memory of Swire staff but witnesses the development of Quarry Bay from a small village to an industrial and later residential/commercial district. It is now opened to public as a bio-diversity education centre, run by the gov’t. Before that, it was leased to ICA Hongkong for concerts and exhibitions on 1985-2001. It would be very much appreciated if there are any photos, stories or anything about Woodside that former ICA members in HK could share. It would be great if we could meet in person or communicate via email (aw2046(a)gmail.com <mailto:aw2046@gmail.com>). Thank you so much! Best Regards, Angel Wong -- *_Martin Gilbraith_* *President, the Institute of Cultural Affairs International (ICAI) – www.ica-international.org <http://www.ica-international.org>* ** Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF), Trainer & Consultant /Check out my web pages and blog at www.martingilbraith.com <http://www.martingilbraith.com>/ *Email: *president(a)ica-international.org <mailto:president@ica-international.org> *Follow:*http://www.twitter.com/martingilbraith *Phone:*+44 (0)7876 722712 *Connect:*http://www.linkedin.com/in/martingilbraith *Skype:*martingilbraith *Friend: *http://www.facebook.com/martingilbraith

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Interesting reflection on David Brooks and Tom Friedman
by James Wiegel 14 Jun '13

14 Jun '13

What is your sense of what is going on with whistle blowing? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barton-kunstler-phd/the-vaudeville-rhetoric-o… Jim Wiegel "There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar. It keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor." George Santayana 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353-2401 +1 623-363-3277 skype: jfredwiegel jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com Upcoming public course opportunities: ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 17-18, 2013 ToP Strategic Planning, Nov 5-6, 2013 Facilitation Graphics, March 19, 2013 The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday of each month 1-4 pm Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Current program began on Nov 14-16, 2012 See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website for further details. AICP Planners: 14.5 CM for all ToP courses

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FW: Barbara Alerding obituary
by Lynda Cock 14 Jun '13

14 Jun '13

Thinking of Barbara and her family today. Pat Horgan is Bill's sister. _____ From: Patricia and Denis Horgan [mailto:thehorgans@comcast.net] Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2013 6:13 PM To: Ryan, Bob; Rowan, Jean; Richardson, Clare; McCormick, James; LaFlamme, Erika; Jeffrey, Alayna; Horgan, Timothy; Horgan, Tanya; Horgan, Hillary Wasch; Horgan, Denis; Horgan, Daniel; Webster, Christine; Masters, Patrick; Masters, Dan; Masters, Alyce & Bill; Masters, Louise; Curtis, Mary; Berry, Lorrie; Barning, Terri; Alerding, Steven; Alerding, Philip; Alerding, Lynda & Philip; Alerding, John Cc: Young, Wesley A.; Wilhoite, Jo Ann; Tonikka Terrell; Pam Mckinney; Lynda Cock; joaquina rodriguez Subject: Barbara Alerding obituary Barbara's obituary can be seen at the following link for Crown Hill Funeral Home: http://www.crownhill.org/obits/obituaries.php/obitID/251855 The obituary will also be printed in the Indianapolis Star on June 12. Best wishes to all -- Pat

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Georgianna McBurney
by Wilson Priscilla 14 Jun '13

14 Jun '13

Malibu cityhood advocate Georgianna McBurney passes away Memorial service is set for 11 a.m. on Saturday at Malibu City Hall. Story ShareShare Print Create a hardcopy of this page Font Size: Default font size Larger font size Courtesy of Jana McBurney-Lin Georgianna McBurney Posted: Thursday, June 13, 2013 12:00 pm | Updated: 1:39 pm, Thu Jun 13, 2013. Georgianna "Georgie" Edwards McBurney, a key leader in Malibu's efforts for cityhood, died peacefully in her home Tuesday, June 11, surrounded by friends, family, caregivers and her cat, Angel. She was 85. "Georgianna worked hard to make Malibu its own special enclave, by helping to gain cityhood in 1991, serving as a telecommunications commissioner, working to make the dream of Legacy Park a reality and doing whatever she could to protect and enhance the community," her family wrote. She is survived by her three children, Holly, Jana and John, son-in-law, Hui Hui, daughter-in-law, Elisabeth, four grandchildren, Shan, Jim, T. George and Tianna, and her cat Angel. A memorial service is scheduled at Malibu City Hall, 23825 Stuart Ranch Road, for Saturday, June 15 at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Malibu Community Labor Exchange at 23595 Civic Center Way in Malibu. Flowers may be sent to Malibu City Hall 23825 Stuart Ranch Road. Alternatively, donations may be made to one of the charities Georgianna held close to her heart: Malibu Labor Exchange P.O. Box 2273 Malibu, CA 90265 or Accelerate 77 (a greening project in the 77 neighborhoods of Chicago she helped map), c/o ICA 4750 N. Sheridan Rd. Chicago, Illinois 60640. Priscilla H Wilson Prairie Village, KS Pris(a)TeamTechPress.com www.teamtechpress.com

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Re: [Dialogue] 6/13/13, Spong: The Birth of Jesus, Part XV. The Journey to Bethlehem
by ALICE M BAUMBACH 14 Jun '13

14 Jun '13

Ellie Stock <elliestock(a)aol.com> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > The Birth of Jesus, Part XV > The Journey to Bethlehem > The creators of the birth narratives, Matthew and Luke, used two motifs in interpreting the life of Jesus of Nazareth. First, each was historically aware that Jesus hailed from Galilee, indeed from the village of Nazareth. Too often the gospels report that there was debate about his origins for this not to be true. Galilee was the rustic, poor, non-cultural part of the Jewish nation. Nazareth was an insignificant town in a looked-down-upon region. Yet, they could never escape the fact that Jesus was called “Jesus of Nazareth” and referred to as a Galilean. The claim of Jesus’ disciples that he was the messiah was thus ridiculed because of these historical facts of his origin. “Search the scriptures,” his critics invited the crowds to do, “and nowhere will you find the suggestion that the messiah will come out of Galilee.” It was thought even more impossible for the messiah to grow up in Nazareth. “Nothing good can come out of Nazareth,” they declared. History is sometimes quite inconvenient when myth-making is going on. This was the first motif of the birth narratives. > The place of Jesus’ origins seems not to have been an issue for Paul. Mark, the first gospel writer, assumes that Jesus was born in Nazareth and that he grew up there. When his place of origin began to be a problem for those eager to assert the messianic claim, the pressure began to build to locate his place of birth in a more noble setting. That was when the second motif around his birth appeared and had to be served. > There were many messianic images in Jewish history, but a major and consistent one was that the messiah had to restore the throne of King David. In time this meant that the messiah himself had to have a claim to be a descendent and thus an heir to the royal line of King David. That throne had been lost to the Jews since 586 BCE. In that year the Babylonian conquerors had destroyed Judah in warfare. In that war’s aftermath the Babylonians rounded up and murdered all the heirs to the final Davidic king, a man named Zedekiah, and they imprisoned him after putting out his eyes. When Zedekiah finally died in prison, the royal throne of the House of David was thus thought to be vacant. That was when the idea of messiah began to grow both in Jewish thought and in Jewish mythology. Messiah was part of the national dream of restoration. The royal line of King David was an important symbol in all the hopes expressed for “the coming kingdom.” One aspect of that hope was that the messiah would reflect his Davidic roots by being born in Bethlehem, the city of David. This hope was read into a text in the prophet Micah that extolled the little town of Bethlehem as the birthplace of Judah’s kings. Slowly, this town with its royal connections and its location in the land of Judah about six miles from Jerusalem, began to rise in the messianic dreams. Messiah must be of the house of David and he must be born in Bethlehem. > Matthew was the first to make this claim, but it was easy for him. He assumed that both Mary and Joseph lived in a house in Bethlehem. For this baby to be born there seemed quite natural. Matthew’s problem was that he then had to find a way to deal with history and with the fact that this baby, though born in Bethlehem, would grow up in Nazareth of Galilee. > Luke, who accepts Mark’s frame of reference involving Jesus’ Galilean roots, had the opposite problem. How could it be arranged for a couple who lived in Galilee actually to be in Bethlehem when the child was born? Luke hit upon a scheme that probably has some semblance of history to it and he used it to tell his magnificent story that is familiar to most of us today. There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world was to be enrolled. Was this a census? Was it for the purpose of taxation? Periodically we learn from the Old Testament that the Jews wanted to count their citizens. There are historical hints of a census ordered within a decade after the death of King Herod or around 6 to 7 CE. The idea that an empire-wide census, however, was ever undertaken stretches credibility to the breaking point. There were no records, no birth certificates, no marriage certificates, no death certificates. Travel was hard and slow. Records were stored nowhere. Luke, however, needed to have a hook on which to create his story of the Bethlehem birth of a child whose parents were citizens of Nazareth. So he used the presumed census to account for the fact that Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem. > This enrollment, Luke said, occurred when Quirinius was governor of Syria. That was an interesting addition. Luke has already related that the births of John the Baptist and Jesus had occurred when “Herod was the King of Judea.” We know from secular records, however, that Herod died in the year 4 BCE. On the other hand, we know that Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until the winter in which the year 6 CE turned into the year 7 CE. So, if Jesus was born when Herod was king, he would have been ten to eleven years old when this enrollment was ordered. The presumed history behind this birth narrative begins to wobble perceptibly. > Next we learn that Joseph, because he was of the house and lineage of David, must, as a pre-requisite of this census, return to his ancestral home to be enrolled. This, Luke asserted, was the key that resulted in a Bethlehem birthplace for Jesus.. Does this mean that all the direct heirs of King David had to make the journey to Bethlehem? David, who according to the Bible had many wives and many concubines, reigned in Judah from the year 1000 to 960 BCE. If we count a generation at 20 years, a rather generous number in a world where life expectancy was only in the thirties, there would be about 48 generations between David and Jesus. If David had only 50 children, a rather small number for a king with a large harem, his direct descendants in 48 generations would be well over a billion people! Suppose it was a fact, as Luke asserts, that all of David’s direct heirs had to return to Bethlehem to be enrolled? It is no wonder there was no room at the inn! Historicity is shattered. > One final note, Luke tells us that Joseph had to take Mary with him for this enrollment. Why this was necessary is not stated. In that patriarchal era, women were not enrolled, counted or taxed. They were thought of as property, part of the male’s wealth upon which taxes were paid. If this baby is to be born in Bethlehem, however, Mary, Jesus’ mother, must be in Bethlehem. So Luke tells us that Joseph took her with him even though she “was great with child,” to use the beautiful language of King James’ English. “Great with child” surely means near to term so we can assume that she was in her last month of pregnancy. > How many of us have ever stopped to realize that Bethlehem was 94 miles from Nazareth? Do we embrace that the two options for transportation open to them in the first century were walking or riding on a donkey? Do we understand that this was a seven to ten day journey that would have to average nine to twelve miles a day? Are we aware that in this era there were no restaurants or hotels along the way? Now ask yourself, what man in his right mind would take his nine-months pregnant wife on a 94 mile journey on a donkey or actually walking, when the literal reason for taking her does not hold any credibility? It was a Roman Catholic lay theologian, Rosemary Ruether, who after reading this birth narrative in Luke, remarked that “only a man who had never had a baby could have written this story.” > Religious art portrays this journey to Bethlehem with Mary riding side saddle on a donkey led by a walking Joseph. That is little more than romantic imagination. In the text there is no donkey. That should not surprise us. In Matthew’s story of the Wise Men, there are no camels. In Luke’s story, there is no stable. There are no animals around the Christ Child in the stable because there is no stable. There is only a feeding trough, called a manger. That feeding trough could be out in the fields as easily as it could be inside a structure. Be aware that pageants and human imagination have created images for us that are in fact not biblical. > Luke’s story, however, has achieved its agenda. The Nazareth-based family has managed to be located physically in Bethlehem when the child is born. The messianic connection has been established. Mythology has been enhanced. > Luke does two more things that I have mentioned earlier in this series. I repeat them here, because we can see them now in context. He takes a text from the Wisdom of Solomon where the richest of all the Jewish kings says: “When I was born I was carefully swaddled, for there is no other way for a king to come to his people.” So Luke says that they wrapped the babe in swaddling cloths and this clue was given to the shepherds to help them find him. Second, he was placed into a manger, an image Luke borrowed from Isaiah 1. This one faithful Jew, unlike the history of his people in the time of Isaiah, would know from the moment of his birth who was his father and what largesse he received from the God he represented. There are many levels on which the stories of the birth of Jesus can be read. Literalism is not one of them. > So we will bring this study of the birth narratives to a conclusion next week. This is rich material, but it is not history and our analysis reveals that it was never understood by the authors of both Matthew and Luke to be history. It is a pity that the Gentiles who became both the majority and the dominant strain in the Christian Church after about 150 CE did not know the Jewish Scriptures well enough to understand what the original stories meant. Literalism is not only an expression of biblical ignorance, but it is a distortion of the gospel so dangerous as to be destructive of Christianity itself. > > ~John Shelby Spong > Read the essay online here. > > > > > > > > Question & Answer > Steve Dawson, from Milwaukee asks: > > Question: > The Episcopal Network for Science, Technology and Faith addresses food, climate change, biodiversity and water as important subjects for discussion, but "where's the beef?" Population explosions at the root of most of the problems humanity faces today. Is that topic too sensitive for thinking religious leaders to discuss publicly or are shrinking markets too horrendous to contemplate? > > Answer: > Dear Steve, > Just let me say first that it was a pleasure to meet and talk with you when I was recently in Milwaukee. > The question of population explosion is the central and critical issue that must be faced in any discussion of world hunger, genetically-mutated food supplies, climate change, biodiversity and water purity. To address population control, one must consider the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church as well as those leaders of business, who base all of their planning on the idea of ever-expanding markets and ever-growing bottom lines. That is a formidable set of foes. The objections of the Roman Catholic Church will be the easiest to overcome as most Roman Catholics, at least in the developed world, have long ago ceased to pay much attention to the pronouncements of their church on either birth control or abortion. > The profit motive and the need for expanding markets to keep the economy of the world functioning will be more difficult. It is the affected business enterprises that today fund most of the negativity toward environmental concerns and spread the incredibly false claim that global warming is merely a matter of the earth wobbling on its axis, which, they assert, is a regular and periodic deviation in the history of the earth’s climate and that it is not caused by the human use of fossil fuels over the last 150 years. All of the arguments that this point of view presents are dismissed as nonsense by the scientific world. That fact, however, does not stop corporations from hiring pseudo-scientists to muddy the waters with their pseudo-scientific propaganda. > The way the world economy works, the cost of polluting the universe will have to become more expensive than the cost of ending that polluting process. That day seems to be drawing near with a rapid rise in bizarre weather patterns that produce droughts, floods, tornadoes and killer hurricanes. When coastal America is under water, when the subways of New York City are flooded, when drought greatly reduces the corn crop or the wheat crop in America’s heartland and causes the price of food to go up around the world, perhaps the political will to address population explosion will be present. > How it is addressed will then be the issue. I am not sure the world could or should follow the Chinese model. I think we accomplish the task of population control, first, by educating women so that they can make better choices for the quality of their lives. Statistics reveal a high correlation between the educational level a woman receives and the number of babies she produces. Second, through the tax structures of the various nations, we ought to begin to offer financial incentives for fewer children. For example, we need to enact a law that prohibits tax deductions for offspring after two children or that provides more financial aid for the first two children of each family to get higher education and no assistance for children after number two. When all of the children after the second one become very expensive to raise and educate, then the population growth rate will begin to come down. When it becomes stable and sustainable, the economic engines of the human enterprise ought to be dedicated to the improvement of the quality of life for all. > There was a time when family planning and birth control were considered sinful. I think we have reached the time in history where the lack of family planning and the unwillingness to use birth control must be deemed to be both sinful and irresponsible. > > ~John Shelby Spong > > > ***IMPORTANT NOTE: The book by Helnut Thielicke, referenced in last week's q and a section, is not entitled Parables as I suggested, but is entitled The Waiting Father. Thanks to a number of my readers for pointing this out. ~JSS > > > > > > > > Announcements > > The Latest Book from John Shelby Spong Is Now Available! > > > > Order The Fourth Gospel: > Tales of a Jewish Mystic Today! > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > In The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic, John Shelby Spong argues that this last gospel was misinterpreted by the framers of the fourth-century creeds to be a literal account of the life of Jesus. Rescuing John’s Gospel from its creedal captivity, the author provides a unique primer about how to be a Christian in the post-Christian twenty-first century. > > The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic was designed first to place Jesus into the context of the Jewish scriptures, then to place him into the worship patterns of the synagogue and finally to allow him to be viewed through the lens of a popular form of first-century Jewish mysticism. > > > The result of this intriguing study is not only to recapture the original message of this gospel, but also to provide us today with a radical new dimension to the claim that in the humanity of Jesus the reality of God has been met and engaged. > > > > > Click here to read the: Preface of The Fourth Gospel- by Bishop Spong > > “Bishop Spong’s in-depth struggles with and work on the Gospel of John have resulted in a book that challenges dominant assumptions and interpretations. This book will help anyone who cares to think about faith in open, dynamic, hospitable, and inclusive ways.” > > — Tat-siong Benny Liew, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean; Professor of New Testament Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, CA > > “Leave it to Bishop Spong to uncover a message of universal hope that is deeply rooted in Jewish mysticism. Spong’s synthesis of Johannine scholarship will lead both clergy and lay readers to a new appreciation of the surprising origins and message of the Fourth Gospel.” > > — David Felten & Jeff Procter-Murphy, authors of Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity > > “Spong invites readers on a stimulating and challenging journey to read the gospel of John afresh and to consider Christianity from a new perspective. This is a must read for every Christian who has tried to make sense of this gospel.” > > — Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan, Dean and Professor of Hebrew Bible, The Theological School, Drew University > > “Spong is always readable and informative, but this book reads like a cross between a detective story and an adventure saga that is founded on excellent scholarship. I could not put it down.” > > — Fred C. Plumer, President of ProgressiveChristianity.Org (read this whole review here) > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. > > > > > > > Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. > You are receiving this email because you have a membership at our website. > Our mailing address is: >ProgressiveChristianity.org >3530 SE Hawthorne Blvd. >Unit 1 >Portland, OR 97214 > >Add us to your address book > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >_______________________________________________ >Dialogue mailing list >Dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net >http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net

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