- Dialogue - lists.wedgeblade.net

Be Grateful and Kind….time flies by. Love, Ellen ( Dick and I were married for 63+years)
by RICHARD HOWIE 23 Mar '22

23 Mar '22

Sent from my iPad > On Mar 14, 2022, at 7:46 PM, James Wiegel via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: > > Judy and I will mark our 51st anniversary next Monday, March 21, 2022. Every so often we run across notes from our rehearsal dinner a few days before our wedding – shared wisdom, advice and stories from those present to guide us as we set out on our marriage journey. We re-read those notes with much appreciation. > > Now, a half century later, with several decades (perhaps) ahead of us, what wisdom, advice, insights, and stories might you offer to help us do well in the journey ahead? > > This broad “family” of which you are a part has been a warm and useful treasure for us. Thanks in advance. > > > > Jim Wiegel > The unknown is what is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is what is. Accept that it's unknown, and it's plain sailing. John Lennon > > 401 North Beverly Way,Tolleson, Arizona 85353 > 623-363-3277 > jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com > www.partnersinparticipation.com > _______________________________________________ > Dialogue mailing list > Dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net

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gmail problems solved on the Ides of March
by Timothy Wegner 18 Mar '22

18 Mar '22

Dreamhost responded to my support ticket the afternoon of March 15 (the Ides of March!) and I haven't seen any issues since then, so I will bravely say that the list problems with gmail are gone. Google tightened up their requirements for gmail accounts to receive mail, and our mailing list was deficient. Except for the annoyance, consternation, and general tooth gnashing for us, this was not necessarily a bad thing; Google's gmail changes will result in less spam mails for gmail users. Dreamhost made a change to our lists.wedgeblade.net domain that made our list compliant and Google much happier (if one can speak of a mega corporation as "happy"!). Let's not discuss this further here, but feel free to send me a private email if you are a gmail user and have had more problems since late on March 15th (yes there were problems earlier on that day before the fix was implemented.) Of course you can always email me privately on other topics as well. I hope everyone is well. The news here is that our church has gotten all the donations needed for a refugee family, and now the team is busily obtaining the needed security clearances on our end, which are required of those who will visit the family. We are waiting with bated breath for the decision on which family will be assigned to us. Tim

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3/17/2022, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Irene Monroe: Confusion about the Holocaust confuses understanding antisemitism; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 17 Mar '22

17 Mar '22

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screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv9606512474 #yiv9606512474templateBody .yiv9606512474mcnTextContent, #yiv9606512474 #yiv9606512474templateBody .yiv9606512474mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv9606512474 #yiv9606512474templateFooter .yiv9606512474mcnTextContent, #yiv9606512474 #yiv9606512474templateFooter .yiv9606512474mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Confusion about the Holocaust confuses understanding antisemitism | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Irene Monroe March 17, 2022Conversations about race in America are our third rail. It trips us all up. Whoopi Goldberg proved that last month on the television talk show "The View" during a conversation about a Tennessee school district banning "Maus," a graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its curriculum. In her rebuke, Goldberg empathically stated the Holocaust was "not about race." She described the Holocaust as a form of sectarian violence when she said, "These are two white groups of people." Later that evening, in what was supposed to be Goldberg's public mea culpa moment, she further tripped herself up in the controversy by doubling down on her premise." As a Black person, I think of race as being something that I can see. So, I see you, and I know what race you are," Goldberg said during an appearance on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." Goldberg's faux pas - which itself occurred during a discussion about education - should have evolved into a prime teaching moment for America to have a robust conversation about the relationships between antisemitism, racism and whiteness. Race is a social construct and not a biological fact. However, the deleterious effects of America's dominant black/white racial paradigm excludes other racial groups whose skin color and phenotype complicate the racist model. On "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," Goldberg further expounded that Jews are white and the Holocaust was "white on white" genocide. She illustrated a hypothetical situation in which white supremacists would be able to spot her visibly, but not a Jewish friend. "If the Klan is coming down the street… I'm gonna run. But if my friend decides not to run, they'll get passed by most times, because you can't tell who's Jewish," Goldberg said. "It's not something that people say, 'Oh that person is Jewish.'" While it is true that most Jews in America are Ashkenazi and predominantly white-skinned, how we view race today in America is very different than how it was viewed in Europe during the Holocaust. As a matter of fact, America's racial caste system informed Nazi Germany. Both white America and Nazi Germany wanted to maintain racial purity. America's system of Jim Crow laws on anti-miscegenation criminalizing sex and marriage between blacks and whites laid the legal groundwork for banning Jewish and Aryan marriages, which the Nazis called rassenschande, which translates to "race defilement." The Nuremberg Laws - the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor - were racist, antisemitic and separated Jews from society. While it is also true that many European Jews have white skin like their oppressors, 92% of American Jews describe themselves as white, according to a recent May 2021 Pew Research Center Poll. From an American perspective on race, white as a racial category erases racial differences and the struggles of European immigrants like Hungarians, Italians, Irish, Greeks, etc. Noel Ignatiev's book How the Irish Became White illustrates how an oppressed group became part of a white racial class. White privilege that America confers to white-skinned people obscures and complicates how some whites are harmed by an economic system that disempowers them and their support of public policies against the best interests of most people, including most whites. Also, white privilege complicated our understanding of antisemitism. For International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27th, I joined the Congregation Beth Israel of Merrimack Valley to discuss the book People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn and explore the pervasiveness of antisemitism. The Anti-Defamation League's latest report on antisemitism in the United States reports more than 2,000 assaults, harassment and acts of vandalism in 2020, the third highest year on the organization's record. What is happening in America right now is not just a crisis for Jews. It is a crisis for this nation as a whole; it is an assault on the very thing that makes us all Americans. We don't often see antisemitism until something awful happens. For example, in August 2017, at the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacists threw Nazi salutes, waved swastika flags and shouted, "The Jews will not replace us!" And in January, a gunman held four hostages at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. It was a targeted act of terrorism, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray stated emphatically. Antisemitism should be tied to other hate crimes - racism, homophobia and Islamophobia, to name a few - but understood as having a distinct history and motivations. Holocaust Remembrance Day reminds us of that history. During the Holocaust, six million Jews were killed. False equivalence and revisionism of that fact are not only hurtful to remaining Holocaust survivors, their families and friends, but also dismissive of the human carnage and crime against humanity. In 2017, then-President Donald Trump's public statement commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day intentionally omitted any mention of Judaism, antisemitism or the Nazis' systematic program exterminating European Jewry. While the president's generic statement on suffering might have been intended to be an all-inclusive acknowledgment of other groups killed - gays, Gypsies, political dissidents and non-Aryans, to name a few - by the Nazis, it did more harm than help. At the ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1995, Elie Wiesel stated it best: "It is true that not all the victims were Jews. But all the Jews were victims." In other words, eliminating Jews was the central organizing principle for the rise of the Third Reich. The president's statement acknowledging the Holocaust and not mentioning Jews and antisemitism is similar to making a public statement acknowledging American slavery and not mentioning Blacks and racism. At worst, the statement bolsters an already existing worldwide population of Holocaust deniers and revisionist historians because it erases the unique stories of survival, bravery and resistance. When Martin Luther King Jr. was invited to address the American Jewish Committee convention in 1958, he noted the significant similarities between Jews and African Americans, who both experienced hatred and prejudice."My people were brought to America in chains. Your people were driven here to escape the chains fashioned for them in Europe," he said. "Our unity is born of our common struggle for centuries, not only to rid ourselves of bondage, but to make oppression of any people by others an impossibility." On Jan. 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol Insurrection, history was made in Georgia. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, a Black man and a Jewish man respectively, won their Senate seats in the Bible Belt. In the Deep South, Jews could be lynched as Black men were; it was the lynching of Leo Frank in Georgia in 1915 that made many Jews conscious of the parallels. However, antisemitism is so pervasive as to be invisible and normalized. One reason is that too often we de-historicize Jewish people from their suffering. For example, I know of Christians who love Jesus but hate Jewish people. I tell them it's similar to some white Christians revering MLK and former President Barack Obama, but they hate Black men. I remind these same people that Jesus was crucified because he was Jewish, and Emmett Till, Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery were killed because they were Black. Antisemitism has also been fueled by racist Jewish tropes that won't cease until we confront them head-on. I remember when the Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign stopped in New York City. He referred to Jews as "Hymies" and the Big Apple as "Hymietown." During Trump's presidential campaign, he was condemned by Jewish leaders for what appeared on his anti-Hillary Clinton poster the Star of David layered over $100 bills. Trump barked back, telling his critics the star was a sheriff's badge. In People Love Dead Jews, the premise is that there's too little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present. To stop antisemitism in society, we must stop it in ourselves. However, we must understand Jewish people as a race with a long and ongoing history of discrimination. ~ Rev. Irene Monroe Read online here About the Author The Reverend Monroe does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on NPR's WGBH (89.7 FM). She is a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS. Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists. A Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist; her columns appear the Boston LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. Monroe states that her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As a religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By David When Jesus died on the cross, did God die? A: By Rev. Fran Pratt Dear David,I wish that I could hear more context from you on this question! I’m curious what prompts you to ask it? what are your thoughts on the nature of death in general? and so on. But, based on your words here, I’ll say: I don’t have an answer for you; but I do have a response. It’s somewhat paradoxical - a few truths coexisting here that might on the surface seem contradictory, but hang with me for a bit ok? I don’t think God dies, but at the same time I think God is death just as God is life. I think God is found in all life, all matter, all energy; and since the nature of life is to be finite or cyclical, God is there is the cyclical nature of death and rebirth as well. Remember the Law of Conservation of Mass that states “Matter is neither created nor destroyed,” but it can get re-arranged in different configurations? I think God is like that. And at the same time I think God is like the alchemy the ancients sought to harness. Remember how they wanted to transmute base metals into highly valuable ones, and find an elixir for immortality? I think God is like that too. God can show us the true value of what’s in our hands, and reveal to us the timelessness of our souls. So much of the Christian story is a blend of these two stories: one - a story of birth, life, death, re-birth; a main theme of the whole story being that death is not an end but merely a transition to another form. Another - a story of the nature of things we thought were “base” - such as the body or the earth - being revealed as “gold” or spirit. I love how quantum physics gives us some language for spiritual matters, like in wave-particle duality; a thing is a particle but it’s also a wave! It’s both at once, or either, depending on who’s observing it. So my roundabout response to your question is: Yes! And No! Yes, in my view Jesus was an embodiment of God (as are you and I) and when his body died God experienced death. AND! Of course God can’t die because God is constantly rearranging Themself in patterns and configurations, particles and waves, “from glory to glory,” as the scriptures say. And it’s that ever-changing changelessness that makes God God. Death and change are only failures from a very limited human ego perspective. A wider lens shows us the beauty of death as a transition to a new form, an alchemical progression on a journey. So, if God dies, no biggie! What’s next? ~ Rev. Fran Pratt Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Fran Pratt is a pastor, writer, musician, and mystic. Making meaningful and beautiful liturgy to be spoken, practiced, and sung, is at the heart of her creative drive. Fran authored a book of congregational litanies, and regularly creates and shares modern liturgy on her website and Patreon. Her prayers are prayed in churches of various sizes and traditions across the globe. She writes, speaks, and consults on melding ancient and new liturgical streams in faith and worship. Fran is Pastor of Worship and Liturgy at Peace of Christ Church in Round Rock, Texas. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit rely heavily on the good will of our donors to help us continue to bring individuals and churches the messages of progressive Christians, Weekly Newsletters, along with the many other resources we provide. For years, the majority of our fundraising came at the end of the year. Looking at various ways to create a more reasonable amount of cash flow we decided rather than having a BIG ask at the end of each year, our more frequent asks give folks a chance to contribute when their funds are more flexible. We think that's a win for everyone. We also want to highlight the opportunity to become a sustaining supporter. If you are looking for the best way to help us continue to provide progressive Christian resources, become a sustaining supporter by choosing Recurring Donation. Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary. | | | | | | | | | | | Don't miss the next Episode of PC.org's Executive Directors Mark and Caleb on: The Moonshine Jesus Show - every Monday at 4:30pm Eastern Time – watch live on Facebook,, YouTube, Twitter, Podme | | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited "Think Different - Accept Uncertainty" Part V: The Traditional Religious Definition of Human Life Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong March 1, 2012In this series we have looked at the changing understanding of God throughout human history. We have tried to separate the God experience of transcendence, wonder and awe from the God explanation that has ranged from animism to fertility cults and mother worship to a God understood after the analogy of a tribal chief and currently to a kind of monotheistic oneness that has become all but universal, yet is still conceived in widely different ways across the great religious systems of the world. Despite all the claims made by religious people that they possess certainty in their formulation of who God is, the fact remains that no human mind and no human religion can finally capture in words or creeds the fullness of the mystery of God, primarily because all concepts of God are the products of the finite human mind. This means that the regular religious attempts to do so or to claim that this has actually been accomplished are little more than expressions of human idolatry. In spite of the regular refrain of ecclesiastical propaganda, there is and cannot be any such thing as “one true religion” or “one true church.” So, how can we think “different” about religion and how can we accept “uncertainty” in religion if we do not face this truth? The fact is we cannot. Imperialistic religion is always employed in the quest for power and it will always seek to impose itself upon the world. Why? Because it is the nature of human beings to build a mighty fortress behind which they can hide their rampant insecurity. If anyone is allowed to question official truth then its power to provide security disappears. That is why “religious talk” so often devolves into irrationality. When God is defined as a supernatural power, who is both ready and willing to come to our aid, then without realizing it we have also defined human life in a negative way. To be human is now to be inadequate. We are creatures who must seek the favor of a theistic God. To illustrate this reality look at the image of God and the resulting definition of human life that dominates especially Western religious systems. In the language of our religious systems we portray ourselves either as children relating to a heavenly father or as convicted felons standing before a “hanging judge.” We are supplicants eager to please the authoritarian deity. That is why so often in our liturgical language we find ourselves saying: “Have mercy, have mercy!” Can anyone not understand how distorting that stance can be to our humanity? Is it possible for us to escape this self-definition without abandoning the traditional and popular concept of the external, supernatural God who is our parent and our judge? I do not think so. That is why a religious reformation is required for the survival of Christianity that will enable us to “think different” and to “accept uncertainty.” If we are to find a way to escape the negativity that traditional religion pours upon the dignity of human life, we will inevitably have to move away from the idea of God as a supernatural, external being. The deeper question is: “Can we move away from the theistic definition of God without moving away from God? I believe we can, but traditional religious leaders will not make that distinction and because they will not they will almost inevitably distort totally what I am trying to say. Allow me to try to unravel this torrent of theological words. Traditionally, those of us who are the recipients of and practitioners in the Judeo-Christian faith system that marks the Western World have in our definition of God attributed to God all of the things of which we human beings are lacking. God is infinite, we are finite. God is immortal, we are mortal. God is perfect, we are imperfect. God is all powerful, omnipotent, we are limited in power. God is everywhere, omnipresent; we are bound to one place at a time. God is all knowing, omniscient, we are limited in knowledge. God is timeless, we are bound by time. These ideas seem so obvious, but the sum of these definitions of God produces a picture of human life that is lacking in both talent and in ultimate worth. God is the heavenly extension of all of the things about which we feel inadequate. So, against this common definition of God, we human beings have been taught to judge ourselves to be inadequate creatures. This insufficiency of human life forms one of the major motifs of Christian worship. In our liturgies we human beings judge ourselves constantly as those lacking in worth. We sing of God’s “amazing grace,” but we soon learn that what makes God’s grace so amazing is that it saves “a wretch like me.” We sing to God the flattering words “How great thou art,” only to learn that God’s greatness lies in the divine ability to stoop to save a sinner like me. We refer to God in our hymns as the potter and to ourselves as the passive clay begging God to “mold me and make me.” We tell God in worship that “there is no health in us,” that “we can do nothing good” without divine help, that we are not even worthy to “gather up the crumbs” from the divine table. We portray this external deity as an inescapable judge from whose all-seeing gaze we can never hide. The plea for mercy that emanates from the lips of worshipers might be appropriate for a child standing before an abusive parent or for a convicted criminal standing before a sentencing judges, but is it ever appropriate for a human being standing before a God whose name is Love? This definition of human life is also the primary background theme in the way we Christians traditionally tell the Christ story. Jesus comes, we say, as the savior of the sinner, the redeemer of the fallen and the rescuer of the lost. We are portrayed as helpless victims begging for the intervening God to come to our aid. We are pictured as standing in the lostness of our own weakness and guilt, waiting for the punishment we deserve. When raised to our awareness it is a strange portrait of human life, but it is so pervasive that we have been dulled to its debilitating presence and are thus surprised when it is lifted into our conscious minds. How does this God then come to our aid? We say God sent Jesus to save us from our sins. How did Jesus affect this salvation? “He died for our sins,” we reply. That is, the unforgiving Father had to punish someone and since we were not able to bear the divine wrath, God punished Jesus in our place. Is that a healthy way to view God, Jesus or ourselves? One can, however, hardly go to a Christian church without hearing this aspect of the salvation story being proclaimed. Protestants have made a mantra out of the phrase, “He died for my sins,” repeating it unquestioningly week after week. Roman Catholics refer to their primary act of worship as the reenactment of the crucifixion. They call it “the sacrifice of the Mass,” because it makes timeless the moment when Jesus suffered and died for my sins. All Christians have made a fetish out of the cleansing blood of Jesus. Protestants want to bathe in it so that their “sins might be washed away.” Evangelical hymn books are filled with such titles as: “Washed in the Blood,” “Saved by the Blood” and “There’s a Fountain filled with Blood!” One Lenten hymn in my Episcopal hymnal exhorts God to “bleed on me.” Catholics on the other hand speak of being cleansed inwardly by “drinking the blood of Jesus” in the Eucharist. When these aspects of this “blood ritual” are raised to our consciousness, we experience a sense of repulsion. Yet we Christians wallow in this mentality Sunday after Sunday, year after year. Lots of people appear to drop out of the church because they find worship vaguely uncomfortable. Perhaps one of the reasons is that this theology of human depravity and degradation unconsciously pushes us down into the depression of feeling worthless. When we analyze this theological understanding we find that it misrepresents God, distorts Jesus and destroys our human dignity. It is wrong in every detail! First, it turns God into an unforgiving monster who must have a victim for the wrath of the offended deity. This is a concept of God apart from love, forgiveness and compassion. Unable to extract the payment due from us sinners, God kills the son to accomplish divine justice. This makes god the ultimate child abuser. What a dreadful deity this is. Second, this theology turns Jesus into a chronic victim. His love is seen as a willingness to accept divine abuse on our behalf. Perhaps that is why we have kept him hanging on his cross in the symbol of the crucifix. This allows us to crucify him daily through our ongoing sinfulness. Third, this theology dumps enormous amounts of guilt, unbearable guilt, onto us when we are worshipers. That is why we are taught to beat our breasts and to plead for mercy. We are, this theology proclaims, responsible for the death of Jesus. Our sins resulted in his crucifixion. We are all “Christ killers.” Guilt has become the coin of the realm in church life. It is “the gift that keeps on giving!” Has the imposition of guilt ever produced life and wholeness in anyone? Is guilt not rather one of the most distorting emotions with which human beings have to deal? Have you ever known anyone to be made whole by being told what a wretched and miserable sinner he or she is? How does this square with the promise attributed to Jesus by the Fourth Gospel that his purpose was to bring abundant life to all? The final thing that is wrong with this theology is that it is simply not true. It is based on bad anthropology and a bad understanding of what it means to be human. One cannot build good theology on bad anthropology. When this series continues, I will begin the process of dismantling this debilitating theology by looking at our human origins through a different lens. We are not “fallen” creatures who were born in sin. “Original sin” is a concept that has to go. With it goes the portrait of Jesus as the rescuer of the fallen and the image of God as the external and displeased deity. It will be good riddance! To go here, however, will require that we “think different” and “accept uncertainty.” Not to go there is to face the death of the Christian faith. So stay tuned.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Race, Class, Gender and the Story of Christianity’s Forgotten First Creed Session #1, Friday April 22nd 7:00 – 9:00 pm The First Creed: Discovering a Hidden Faith in Humanity Session #2, Saturday April 23rd 9:00 – 11:30 am Dismantling the Ancient Caste System: The Creed Then Session #3, Saturday April 23rd 1:00 – 2:30 pm Faith and the American Caste System: The Creed Now Read On... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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gmail problems
by Timothy Wegner 17 Mar '22

17 Mar '22

We are still having list problems with those of you with gmail addresses. However, I submitted a support ticket to dreamhost, and they have already made some changes. We shall see if it works. Tim Your Long Suffering List Administrator Who Is Only Too Aware of Life's Contingency

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RECIPROCITY, Robin Wall Kimmerer, 3/17/2022 Environmental Film/Conversation
by Ellie Stock 16 Mar '22

16 Mar '22

Dear Friends, March greetings! It's time for another environmental film/conversation evening! RECIPROCITY is the next environmental film hosted by the Ferguson Eco Team: Thursday, March 17, 2022, 7:00 PM Central Time via ZOOM. A conversation will follow the film viewing. TO REGISTER FOR THE ZOOM LINK: https://bit.ly/FETMar2022 RECIPROCITY is a video presentation by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer who draws on Indigenous and scientific wisdom to offer lessons on how we canheal our relationships with the natural world. Ecological restoration can beunderstood as an act of reciprocity,in return for the gifts of the earth. If good citizens agree to uphold the lawsof the nation, then I choose natural law, the law of reciprocity, of regeneration, of mutual flourishing. The presentation was given at the 28th Headwaters Conference, Center for Environment and Sustainability, Western State Colorado University. Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, writer, and Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology and Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, and is an enrolled member Citizen of the Potawatomi Nation. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild. For more information, please contact:Carleton or Ellie Stock (314) 521-8418carletonstock@aol.comelliestock@aol.com #yiv0478534825 -- filtered {}#yiv0478534825 filtered {}#yiv0478534825 p.yiv0478534825MsoNormal, #yiv0478534825 li.yiv0478534825MsoNormal, #yiv0478534825 div.yiv0478534825MsoNormal {margin:0in;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:sans-serif;}#yiv0478534825 a:link, #yiv0478534825 span.yiv0478534825MsoHyperlink {color:#0563C1;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv0478534825 span.yiv0478534825EmailStyle19 {font-family:sans-serif;color:windowtext;}#yiv0478534825 .yiv0478534825MsoChpDefault {font-family:sans-serif;}#yiv0478534825 filtered {}#yiv0478534825 div.yiv0478534825WordSection1 {}#yiv0478534825

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More details on the upcoming "Standing with the People of Ukraine" event including Zoom Link
by Sunny Walker 15 Mar '22

15 Mar '22

NOTE: Zoom link will say March 17th for BOTH 17th & 18th. It will work for both sessions. Also, these are the same format, just different time zones to facilitate easier participation from around the globe. *STANDING WITH THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE* As we continue to pray, to grieve, and to hope for the peoples of Ukraine, we are hosting an opportunity to join with us and some of our Ukrainian colleagues for a conversation of love and discernment over this crisis. There will be two sessions. Please choose a time that works for you or join both. · 17 March @ 12 PM UTC (7:00 am Chicago – 2:00 pm Kyiv – 3 pm Nairobi – 5:30 pm Delhi – 11 pm Sydney) · 18 March @ 3 am UTC (5:00 am Kyiv – 6 am Nairobi – 8:30 am Delhi – 2pm Sydney – 10 pm Chicago) Zoom Link to Join at the appropriate time (10 minutes before event begins): https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89681913262 [image: image.png] Connect before and after these events to see and share messages of support at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ICAInternational *Sunny Walker * *She/her/hers* *On **Arapaho, Cheyenne, Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute), and Očeti Šakówiŋ (Sioux) tribal land* ON BEHALF OF THE GLOBAL SCHEDULE TEAM

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The Concert for Ukraine — this afternoon
by David Dunn 14 Mar '22

14 Mar '22

Here’s an important opportunity from the Metropolitan Opera: On Monday, March 14, at 6PM ET, the Metropolitan Opera will present a benefit performance to support Ukrainian citizens under attack, with all ticket sales and donations going to support relief efforts in Ukraine. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will lead the Met Orchestra and Chorus and star soloists in a 70-minute program, featuring music by Valentin Silvestrov, Barber, Verdi, Strauss, and Beethoven. The soloists will be Lise Davidsen and Elza van den Heever, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, tenor Piotr Beczała, bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, and Ukrainian bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi, who will lead the Met Chorus in a performance of the Ukrainian national anthem. A Concert for Ukraine will be broadcast in the U.S. via many of the radio stations that regularly carry the Met’s Saturday Matinee Radio Broadcasts, as well as member stations of National Public Radio. Please check your local listing for details. The concert will be broadcast internationally via the European Broadcasting Union, allowing it to be heard in most countries in the world. The concert will also be carried live on Met Opera Radio on Sirius XM (channel 355) and streamed live here <https://www.metopera.org/link/78f44ae495754fd2b55c9e9652992316.aspx>. For a full list of participating stations, click the following: US Radio Stations <https://www.metopera.org/link/c9ea210fde3c4e1093e4d97aa6c66a4c.aspx> International Radio Stations <https://www.metopera.org/link/345932445a624e268b6af5001ba2b72f.aspx> For more ways to help the citizens of Ukraine, visit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine website <https://war.ukraine.ua/support-ukraine/>. A Concert for Ukraine is made possible by a generous gift from C. Graham Berwind, III. Program Details National Anthem of Ukraine “Prayer for Ukraine” by Valentin Silvestrov Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber “Va, pensiero” from Verdi’s Nabucco Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss Lise Davidsen, soprano Finale from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Op. 125 Elza van den Heever, soprano Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano Piotr Beczała, tenor Ryan Speedo Green, bass-baritone Blessings to all. David — "Mystery, possibility, and the power to choose" David Dunn 740 S Alton Way 9B Denver, CO 80247 720-314-5991 dmdunn1(a)gmail.com

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Fwd: Online meditation with the Ukraine Community Update
by Ann Avery 13 Mar '22

13 Mar '22

Dear colleagues and friends Please read the message below even if it may look too long. To me it carries hope Polish time is GMT(plus 1) Thanks for your fellowship Ann ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: The Meditatio Centre <meditatio(a)wccm.org> Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2022 at 12:52 Subject: Online meditation with the Ukraine Community Update To: <ann.h.avery(a)gmail.com> Meditate with Ukraine View this email in your browser <https://mailchi.mp/wccm/online-meditation-with-the-ukraine-community-393881…> Meditate with Ukraine Dear Friends, To all who were not able to connect to the meeting with the Ukraine Community, we apologise. It was necessary to change the zoom link as the original link had been attacked by hackers. We have received many messages from communities who tried to join and then meditated at the same time along with us; we were all together in the silence. Miraculously the few who were able to join represented many parts of the world: Europe, UK, Ireland, USA, Australia, New Zealand and others. Maria spoke about the treasure hidden in the field and forgiving those who sin against us because "they know not what they do". It was very moving. While Maria spoke, Albert was out helping to deliver medical supplies and food to those in need. After meditation we expressed our love and support on behalf of all. As one message said, "no attack by hackers can stop us" and as Maria said: "nothing can stop the light that shines in the darkness". Dear Maria and Albert: We want you to know that many people from many communities were part of our prayer. You, and all Ukraine people continue to be held in an embrace of love that stretches right around the world. The link for the meeting to be hosted by the Polish community is correct, and we hope it will not be hacked. We will send the link for the WCCM event on 26 March in the days before the event. ___________________________________ *POLAND COMMUNITY MEDITATION * Poland invites all meditators *every Sunday at 8pm Polish Time* on "Meditation for Peace" (short reading and meditation) . We would like to continue to meet regularly, as long as the war in Ukraine continues and the world is so in need of hope, love, harmony. We believe that the source of true peace in our hearts and peace between people is God Himself. In common prayer, in silence, we will open our hearts to His action and His voice. We will remain connected to Ukraine, a place of suffering, violence, pain, injustice and death. "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled or afraid!" J 14:27 *Here is the link to the Zoom meeting: * https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81721118133?pwd=eHFXMWQyaGV1MG1pSHFsS0ZsZFdSZz09 <https://wccm.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c3f683a744ee71a2a6032f4bc&id…> Meeting ID: 817 2111 8133 Passcode: 544877 *Malwina WCCM Poland * ____________________________________ *WCCM EVENT * On *Saturday 26th March, 11:00 am to 12:30 pm (UK TIME)* Fr Laurence will lead a session as part of the Ukrainian community retreat day with a talk and meditation. Present in support will be Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council Emeritus and members of the WCCM from around the world. All are invited to join us in a spirit of solidarity and prayer for Ukraine and their suffering in this war. This session will be in English with Ukrainian and Russian translation *All information here https://my.wccm.org/groups/7057335/feed <https://my.wccm.org/groups/7057335/feed>* [image: Twitter] <https://wccm.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c3f683a744ee71a2a6032f4bc&id…> [image: Facebook] <https://wccm.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c3f683a744ee71a2a6032f4bc&id…> [image: Website] <https://wccm.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c3f683a744ee71a2a6032f4bc&id…> *Copyright © 2022 WCCM, All rights reserved.* You are on our list of contacts of the Meditatio Centre in London. *Our mailing address is:* WCCM Via Francesco Massi, 12 D <https://www.google.com/maps/search/Via+Francesco+Massi,+12+D?entry=gmail&so…> Scala B Interno 22 Rome, RM 00152 Italy Add us to your address book <https://wccm.us4.list-manage.com/vcard?u=c3f683a744ee71a2a6032f4bc&id=71570…> Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences <https://wccm.us4.list-manage.com/profile?u=c3f683a744ee71a2a6032f4bc&id=715…> or unsubscribe from this list <https://wccm.us4.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=c3f683a744ee71a2a6032f4bc&id…>. -- Ann Avery The Garth, Hall Street Wellingore, Lincolnshire LN50HU +44 1522 810278 +44 74607 74036

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3/10/2022, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Fran Pratt: Anchoring Peace; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 10 Mar '22

10 Mar '22

| | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Anchoring Peace | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Fran Pratt March 10, 2022 I write this to you, my Progressive Christian siblings, on a Monday morning during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I had written an entirely different article to submit, but I find myself following a different direction. Together, we are feeling such dismay over this newest war, and finding ourselves provoked to worry, fear, anxiety; aware of the very real threat of global consequences. We pray for an end to the conflict, the safety of the Ukrainian people, and peace on the European continent. Hopefully by the time this article is published we will have a better idea of how things will progress, and outcomes will be favorable. But. Regardless of what happens, if we are to be of any influence and help to the world, we Progressive Christians must be and become people of deep peace and profound prayer. We must situate ourselves so firmly in the Spirit that we are unshakably peaceful - spiritual powerhouse rooted in the solid ground of God. This begins in our inner terrain, with our practice, our discipline, and our identity. We have had two years of pandemic in which to practice peace amidst chaos the likes of which most of us have never experienced. If we have not begun a spiritual practice of cultivating inner peace and anchoring it into the world, it’s not too late to begin. Now is the moment to begin again. We are the ones responsible for our inner resources, our connectedness to the Center, our awareness of our True Self, which is, as Saint Paul writes, “hidden with Christ in God". I want to call our collective attention to the words of Christ as recorded in John 20. Recall the story: Christ has been crucified and entombed. Mary Magdalene approaches the tomb and discovers it is empty, followed by Peter who then goes away with some other disciples. Mary remains, weeping. There Mary is the first to whom Christ reveals himself. That evening the disciples have locked themselves into a room, terrified of the Temple authorities. After all, their teacher has just been brutally and publicly murdered by the state. They are justifiably afraid for their lives as people who were known to follow the now-disgraced Jesus. Suddenly, despite their security precautions, Jesus appears in their midst! And then he does/says three baffling and profound things: - His first words to them in the midst of their terror and caution are “Peace be with you.” He says this twice! (John 20:19-21) - He breathes on them! And with the breath he conveys God’s spirit upon them with the words, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:22) - He shares with them the spiritual power of forgiveness! “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you retain anyone’s sins, they are retained.” (John 20:23) For me, this is one of the most powerful moments in all of the gospels, alongside the Beatitudes in its importance. Jesus is teaching us how to live here, how to navigate the most stressful of times, how to be God-reflections inside of earth’s chaos. Here Jesus wakes the disciples, and us, up to the power we hold and can wield in the world if we discipline ourselves to do it. With every breath, we remember the Spirit of God within us, our inherent divinity and access to the Center of Peace. We are commissioned by Christ to speak and be peace in the world, anchoring the Peace of Christ wherever we are. And we are empowered with the ultimate de-escalation tactic, the weapon to end all weapons, the antidote to every offense, the medicine for every world ailment: forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t mean we immediately try to change people or circumstances, although that is often the result when forgiveness is applied. Nor does it mean we’re apathetic and do nothing. It means we accept people and circumstances as they are and love them anyway. It means we stop resisting what’s happening and instead face it head on, speaking peace to it, ceasing to resent it for being what it is, deflating our urge to punish it. We do all this even as we take reasonable measures to prevent harm, retribution, and violence. Forgiveness is Love’s most powerful tool, but it takes considerable strength to wield. It’s only accessible to us once we’ve come past our ego to tap into a deeper power, the power of Spirit. And, poignantly for us today, forgiveness is the only path to following Christ’s mandate to love our enemies. If we are Christ-followers (or any kind of spiritual people at all), this is what we are: Peace-speakers. Holy Spirit emissaries. Forgiveness experts. But these skills don’t always come easily - at least not until we are fully in the flow of Divine Love. Most of us have layers of trauma to muddle through, bad thought habits, ego hangups, and fear for these temporal bodies of ours. So we have to practice going deep within, past the body into the soul, into the center where God dwells, taking our nets with us so that we can drag the peace, spiritual fortitude and expansive forgiveness we so desperately need up to the surface. We have to practice peace. We have to train ourselves to become peaceful. We have to constantly place reminders before ourselves of who we are and what our work is in this world. So, even when the world is burning, we too are burning as beacons of peace, constantly refueling our inner flame by way of our connection to Spirit. Even when rush and tumult are knocking at our doors, we are inside creating spaces of clarity and calm trust. Even when chaos, greed and division are launching bombs and rhetoric, passing unjust laws, and targeting our vulnerable siblings; we are sowing seeds of peace. We are coming behind sweeping up the detritus of war and composting it for our gardens. Because we forgive everything for happening, we encourage it to transform from death to life. No one can do it for you. No one can make you peaceful. You’ll have to embrace Christ’s words yourself and turn them into action, into daily practice. No pastor or guru or external authority can turn off your inner TV. It’s all on you. The good news is the peace, spiritual power, and forgiveness resources are there for you. For us all. To turn inward, breathe in, and take hold of. So, if you haven’t already, let today be the day you sit yourself down in some quiet place and breathe in the Holy Spirit. Let now be when you dedicate yourself to learning contemplative prayer, or meditation, or Visio Divina, or mantra, or some other practice that carries you inward to the truth of yourself. Let this moment be the beginning of the end of your resentments. Start now so that you are well-resourced and well-practiced at anchoring peace into whatever ground you’re occupying. (If you need a place to start, I offer my Litany For An Anxious Moment as a jumping-in point.) This war, this climate emergency, this pandemic, this personal crisis, this health scare - whatever it is, it is the Contemplative’s time to shine with brilliant inner light. Teilhard de Chardin reminded us that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, and that means that this whole thing is our training ground for being who we truly are. So, back to the words of Christ we go. Back to spiritual practice. Back to cultivating inner peace so that it has a chance to reverberate throughout the world by way of our thoughts, words, actions, and influence. This whole life is our prayer, if we let it be. With love, peace, and blessings, ~ Rev. Fran Pratt Read online here About the Author Rev. Fran Pratt is a pastor, writer, musician, and mystic. Making meaningful and beautiful liturgy to be spoken, practiced, and sung, is at the heart of her creative drive. Fran authored a book of congregational litanies, and regularly creates and shares modern liturgy on her website and Patreon. Her prayers are prayed in churches of various sizes and traditions across the globe. She writes, speaks, and consults on melding ancient and new liturgical streams in faith and worship. Fran is Pastor of Worship and Liturgy at Peace of Christ Church in Round Rock, Texas. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By James John Shelby Spong wrote about a “non theistic” view of God. How do you understand this view and can those who have lived with a view of a personal God find satisfaction in such an approach? Do most progressives come to the non theistic view? A: By Dr. Carl Krieg Thank you James for your question, which has been, and today still is, also my question. Being brought up as a young child, there was always the assumption in my family that God was a loving, caring God, with whom you could speak and relate to in a personal way. This theistic assumption carried right on into my time at Union Theological Seminary in NYC, where we were always referring to God doing this and doing that, not only in biblical times, but in today’s world as well. We all realized, as do you and I now, that God was not up in the sky, far, far away, but there was no answer as to where s/he was. Tillich talked about God as the Ground of Being, or Being-Itself. In a short essay, Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, he laid the groundwork [no pun intended] for one type of what is called panentheism, the idea that God somehow inheres in the universe, but is different from it. I struggled with Tillich, and was never quite convinced that he succeeded in his attempt to bring Person and Being together. There are other ways to think about God. Deism, for example, views God as a creator who did his magic and left for another universe to take a nap. Never sure what such a God was good for. Pantheism asserts that everything is God. But, then, what’s the difference? And so we come back to panentheism, which appears in different contexts. Some believe that God is the consciousness of the universe, manifest of late in human consciousness. This allows for God to be everywhere, but nowhere in particular. Energy is another panentheistic candidate, since energy is everywhere. But… a loving energy field? Sounds like a stretch. A candidate of late has come from string theory, a modern understanding of reality that posits tiny “strings” of vibrating energy that are the building blocks of everything. The mathematics involved require at a minimum that there be 11 dimensions, 7 more than the 3 we are accustomed to dealing with, plus time. The idea is that God could be hiding in one of these dimensions, everywhere, unseen, but very active. How God is both person and loving, as well as Being, I have concluded, is a mystery beyond comprehension. Theology needs to make more room for mystery, just as science does, all the time. Why is there a universe? It’s a mystery. How is particle entanglement possible? Mystery. What was before the Big Bang? On and on. The heart of the Christian faith is also a mystery: that in some manner beyond comprehension, Jesus, crucified, dead, and buried, was - not resuscitated, an old body brought back to life - but resurrected, living again but in a new way that was and is totally incomprehensible. So, in one sense, the essence of theism lives on. We may no longer assert a divine providence wherein a supernatural being controls events or performs miracles or sends punishment for evil deeds. But we do have a God with whom we can relate, who is loving, who surrounds and upholds us, who is a God both personal and cosmic. A mystery, but no less true for being that mystery. ~ Dr. Carl Krieg Read and share online here About the Author Dr. Carl Krieg received his BA from Dartmouth College, MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in NYC and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of What to Believe? the Questions of Christian Faith and The Void and the Vision. As professor and pastor, Dr. Krieg has taught innumerable classes and led many discussion groups. He lives with his wife Margaret in Norwich, VT. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit rely heavily on the good will of our donors to help us continue to bring individuals and churches the messages of progressive Christians, Weekly Newsletters, along with the many other resources we provide. For years, the majority of our fundraising came at the end of the year. Looking at various ways to create a more reasonable amount of cash flow we decided rather than having a BIG ask at the end of each year, our more frequent asks give folks a chance to contribute when their funds are more flexible. We think that's a win for everyone. We also want to highlight the opportunity to become a sustaining supporter. If you are looking for the best way to help us continue to provide progressive Christian resources, become a sustaining supporter by choosing Recurring Donation. Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary. | | | | | | | | | | | Don't miss the next Episode of PC.org's Executive Directors Mark and Caleb on: The Moonshine Jesus Show - every Monday at 4:30pm Eastern Time – watch live on Facebook,, YouTube, Twitter, Podme | | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited "Think Different - Accept Uncertainty" Part IV: Expanding the Bankruptcy of Theism Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong February 16, 2012 Before proceeding with this series, I want to return to my theme of last week and examine the concept of theism more closely. In so doing, I run the risk of repetition, but so crucial is this idea in the development of this series that I am willing to do that in order to make sure that the ground has been laid for a deeper and more significant examination of why the predominant theistic definition of God is mortally wounded and how we must find a way to transcend its limits, while holding open the possibility that the God beyond theism can still be perceived as real. It was a German theologian named Paul Tillich who first opened for me the possibility that God was not a being, supernatural in power, dwelling somewhere beyond the sky and ready to come to us with intervening miraculous power. To say it differently, Tillich was the thinker who first made me realize that “theism” was no longer a definition of God with which I could live. That insight was expanded by reading a book entitled Night, by Elie Wiesel. Wiesel, a teenage Jewish boy, sent by the Nazi regime to the death camps of Adolf Hitler, was parted from his mother at the prison entrance, when Elie and his father were sent in one direction, while his mother and all other women were sent in another. He would never see her again. Somehow Wiesel was destined to survive that horror. Shortly before that war’s conclusion, he watched his father die. Even the presence of the light at the end of the tunnel was not enough to overcome what his father’s body had suffered. Elie Wiesel was thus the sole survivor in his family, but that survival left him a changed man. For Wiesel hope had died, faith in God had died and meaning was in tatters. In the sacred scriptures of his people he had read the story of Moses and the Exodus. His Bible asserted that in the past God had come to the aid of God’s people. God had pounded the Egyptians with multiple plagues until they agreed to set the Jewish people free from their bondage. God had aided their escape, these scriptures proclaimed, by splitting the waters of the Red Sea, so that the Jews could pass through on dry land while the Egyptians all drowned. In the wilderness God had fed these people with bread from heaven, and had brought water for them out of the rock at Meribah. This was a God who saw, who intervened with supernatural power, a God who cared. That was, however, not the Holocaust experience so Wiesel asked: “Where was this God now? Had God abandoned God’s people? Was it possible that God had died? Was his God nothing but a figment of his imagination?” His spiritual crisis was real. In Wiesel’s mind the equation was simple. If God was real and had the power to intervene to stop the Holocaust, but had declined to do so, then God was both responsible and morally culpable. Such a God would be a malevolent demon, not an object of worship. If God did not have the power to intervene then God must be impotent. Having a malevolent God or an impotent God is worse than having no God at all. That was the dilemma that the concept of a theistic deity raised for Wiesel and indeed for everyone else. That is why the human mind has over the centuries felt compelled to justify the ways of God to human minds. The traditional idea of an intervening God equipped with supernatural power collided head on with the idea of God’s goodness. You could not have both. The claims we made for God paled before the enormity of the evil inflicted on the Jews by the Nazis. The inevitable conclusions were clear. Either there was no God or the definition we had of God was woefully inadequate. Wiesel was plunged into the dark night of the soul, and so were many citizens of the Western World. The theistic understanding of God had been badly weakened earlier by the expansion of human knowledge. By the time of the Nazi horror in the first half of the twentieth century, we were well past the writings of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, 16th and 17th century figures, who had in effect rendered homeless the theistic God. The idea that the skies were empty and the universe was infinite was the conclusion toward which these early astronomers were headed. The suggestion that there was an all-seeing deity who kept us as the apple of the divine eye or a deity who numbered the hairs of our heads, or even a God “unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid” became quite problematic. The Christian Church tried to fight back against this heavenly emptiness by putting Galileo on trial and convicting him of heresy. Because of his age and infirmity, however and perhaps also aided by the fact that he had a daughter who was a nun, he was not burned at the stake. Instead he agreed to recant publicly and never again to publish any thoughts contrary to the church’s faith. He was sentenced to live under house arrest for the balance of his days. The church in that era, so drunk with its own power, believed that if someone disagreed with the church’s version of the truth they had to be wrong. That had been the working principle behind the Inquisition. New ideas, they had to learn, cannot be repressed simply because they are inconvenient to established truth. In 1991 the Vatican officially announced that they now believed that Galileo was correct. This was decades past the beginning of space travel. Galileo was right indeed and the theistic understanding of God that Galileo challenged began its slow but inevitable decline. It did not get better for the theistic deity with the work of Isaac Newton in the latter half of the 17thy century. It appeared to Newton and his followers that the universe operated with immutable, natural laws. A capricious deity could not set these laws aside to answer prayers, to send rain, to turn the direction of a hurricane, to stop an earthquake, to cure a sickness, to end a war, or even to counter human atrocities. The religious voices, fettered to a theistic past, found their explanations sounding more like comic relief than serious conviction. All of the things we once assumed to be the actions of the theistic deity were now explained without appeal to that deity at all. Increasingly the world had no need for the theistic God hypothesis. The theistic God had thus become virtually unemployed. The theistic deity was given a pink slip and retired. Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed this God to be dead as long ago as the 19th century. In the1960’s the “God is Dead” theologians, a group of leading Christian academics, added their voices to the despairing state of theological understanding. We are today increasingly living in a post-Christian world and more and more people become convinced almost daily that they can no longer sing the theistic God’s song in the 21st century that all of us now inhabit. If people can not accept this exploding knowledge that has served to call all theistic presuppositions into question, they become defensive and hide behind the irrational and easily dismissed authority claims like being the possessors of either an infallible Pope or an inerrant Bible. If people do embrace the world of new knowledge, they find no room in their lives for the theistic God ideas of the past. They are today leaving the unthinking religious institutions in droves, abandoning the faith of their fathers and mothers to the dustbins of history. It was into that world that Paul Tillich began to seek a new definition of God. Perhaps God is not a being. Perhaps we have created the theistic God in our image, not the other way around. Perhaps we can discover a transcendent dimension in life by looking at being itself. Perhaps it is life that is holy, flowing as it does through every living creature, as it has journeyed from single cells, which first defined life about 3.8 billion years ago, to the self-conscious complexity that human beings now illustrate. Among these self-conscious ones there has always been a yearning to transcend all limits, to engage the meaning of life, to probe the potential of love and to seek oneness with something that is beyond our grasp. Is this ‘God’ not still present hiding behind the theistic categories that are now dying? Can we not let theism die without destroying the human yearning for the divine? It is only the death of theism not the death of God that fuels our current religious despair. Suppose, however, that we look again and see that there is something beyond our separateness that calls us into oneness, that there is something beyond our self-consciousness that invites us into a universal consciousness, and that there is something beyond our limits that encourages us to step beyond all human limitations. Can we not then begin to define this God non-theistically? Instead of searching for God as a being who dwells beyond the sky, Tillich suggested that we turn inward and search for the God who is the Ground of being, the Source of life and the Source of love. Is my life then part of the life that is God? Is my love a manifestation of a love that emanates from God? Is my being related to and grounded in the being of God? Is our mystical yearning a delusion or a pointer toward a new reality? A new door is surely opening for our exploration. We tremble at the door. If we dare to walk through it, we must leave behind almost all of the religious symbols by which we have been nurtured in the past. We will, we fear, become “secular humanists.” If on the other hand, we refuse to walk through that door, we must spend our time defending our dying religious past with increasing hysteria. We become fundamentalists, traditionalists or pre-Vatican II Catholics. If the only alternative to theism is atheism, that will be the result. I propose something quite different. My expectations are that we will find a new understanding of what it means to be human and in that process discover a mystical oneness that can and will relate us to that which is eternal. It is that goal which beckons me to begin this journey that will inevitably take us out of the immaturity of our religious past and into the wonder of our religious future. In that journey inevitably creeds will change, old institutional forms will die and new ones will be born, and all present liturgies will be transformed, but the eternal search for God will go on. That is the challenge facing Christianity today. I am willing to begin the journey now. I hope I am not alone. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Practicing Spirituality in Winter From Spirituality & Practice, a month's worth of practices to explore the many moods and meanings of winter, including its pristine beauty and its many opportunities for playfulness. | | | | | | | | | |

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List gmail problems
by Timothy Wegner 10 Mar '22

10 Mar '22

I am having problems with folks with gmail email addresses not getting list email. This only started recently. I am researching the problem, and can't hazard a guess if it is fixable. Will let you know. Tim

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