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by ICA International 07 Dec '20

07 Dec '20

Enjoy catching up with what is happening in ICAs across the globe.... And please click the link below for the latest issue of the Global Buzz Global Buzz Report: December 2020 or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/7dayreport-20/2020-12-01.php Read the latest ICAI Winds & Waves Magazine brought to you now on Medium.com See here: https://medium.com/winds-and-waves ICAI Communications

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12/03/2020, Progressing Spirit: Kevin Forrester: Grateful & Communal Creatures: ZOOM & The Dynamic Reality Of Being Saved; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 03 Dec '20

03 Dec '20

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Thew Forrester, Ph.D. December 3, 2020 Surprising Reality of Being in Covid When you gaze up into the night sky, perhaps from the sateen darkness of Glacier National Park, or the cozy vestibule of your backyard, what do you see? Pin-wheeling galaxies? Endless expanse of interstellar space? Familiar special neighbors such as Orion or Ursa Major? Whatever your eyes behold is received through story, probably intertwining and commingling narratives. A story of 13 billion years of expanding evolution whose ancient light is landing just now upon your retina. A story of cosmos-as-creation, dynamically unfolding, moment-to-moment, each arising a surprise and replete with mystery. For some, this is a narrative of the power of pure chance at work on both cosmic and microcosmic scales; for others, a story of the bodying-forth of Holy Mystery in which Being emerges from the emptiness of non-Being. Yes, chance is at play but within the wider and deeper Reality of Love. When the beauty of evolution is received and understood within the larger, or meta-, narrative of the bodying-forth of Being, what we behold when we truly behold anything is the Presence of Holy Mystery. Spirituality and science are twin offspring of the same mother – the dynamic Reality of Being – offering complementary understandings and appreciations of Reality. Without spirituality, science can readily devolve into a scientism that flattens Reality, unable to account for the bountiful Mystery of Being; without science, spirituality thins out into naïve spiritualism, a magical thinking divorced from the dynamic laws of nature. Together, spirituality and science can open our consciousness to surprising ways Being manifests in this time of Covid. Grateful (Eucharistic) Creatures It is Moses – representing humanity’s spiritual awakening – who begins to realize that the name of Reality he has been encountering is “I am who I am.” Moses and the Israelites, and through them the people of the West, are initially discovering the truth that Being is the Reality we refer to as “God.” God is not a thing, or a law, or a ritual, but simply “I am,” which means Being. Moses and the people are afraid that as they continue their journey, they will be alone. But Moses, listening to the voice of his heart (which is humanity’s heart), realizes that “I am who I am” will be with them – is with them – as Being. So, they may be at rest. 2300 years later the Irish theologian and philosopher, John Scotus Eriugena, would, in his own way, deepen our understanding of Moses’ realization. Being, or God, is our true nature as human creatures. Our bodies are from dust, but even this dust is not absent of Being. The 20th century German Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner, deepened further the implications, enabling us to speak of creation itself as the Ursakrament, which simply means the fundamental sacrament. Why? Because creation, simply as it is, only exists because Being is its true nature. Nature is and always has been supernatural, or a graced-Reality. Holy Mystery is the essence of creation. Not the essence only of human beings. Not the essence only of mammals. Not the essence only of animals. Not the essence of only select bits and pieces. No. Holy Mystery is the essence of all that is. Spiritually, the evolving cosmos is telling the sacramental story of the gracious unfoldment of creation. Albert Einstein’s scientific theory of relativity, so elegantly and simply expressed in E=mc2, also enriched our appreciation further. What appears as solid and inert to our senses is actually energy, dynamic and fluid. All that is, regardless of its form, is spiritually speaking a manifestation of arising Being. There are no exceptions: from comets to computers, from insects to internet. Since everything is a manifestation, a bodying-forth, of Being, the cosmos – known in the Christian story as the Body of Christ – is sheer gift as the womb of unfolding life. Each creature is a Christ by nature and by calling, as it lives into and slowly realizes the truth of its Being. As we gaze up into the night sky, or into the endless depths of our lover, or at the resplendent shimmering beauty of a sea anemone, how then do we receive what and who we behold? Our heart, when honest and vulnerable as an open womb, receives the beauty with grateful thanksgiving (which is to say, eucharistically). We are awed and humbled beyond words that this cosmos is the intimate bodying-forth of Holy Mystery. When we grow callous or forgetful, our heart longs once again for the moon to press its face against ours and remind us of this truth of who and what we are. Spiritually, to the degree we are awake to Reality as the Body of Christ, we are grateful, eucharistic, creatures. The universe nourishes us without reserve and without thought because its nature is effusive Being. The liturgical eucharist is not a magical exception to life within a barren and inert universe, but rather is an embodiment, an expression in, of, and through which we recognize and celebrate that Being is the Reality of creation, and we are humans of Being. To be human is to be a eucharistic being. Communal Creatures Being bodies-forth as dynamic and evolving energy. Reality, never stagnant, is continually changing in its myriad modes of manifesting. No particular manifestation is ever without Being as its true nature, even when distorted and destructive. To draw upon Paul, there is no “height, nor depth, nor any other created thing” that can separate us from Being, or from the love which is God made manifest in Christ. The life of Jesus clarifies for us that the nature of Being is Boundless Love even in the cold, dark, vacuum of interstellar space or interpersonal relationships. As our species evolves and our awareness matures, new circumstances give rise to new modalities not experienced previously. In this time of Covid, so-called “virtual” reality is one of these relatively new modes of manifestation. Often, I hear leaders and members of religious traditions, for whom the practice of liturgical Eucharist is integral to their spirituality, lamenting the doctrinal “fact” that “Communion” is not possible because we can no longer be present together. All we have is the “virtual” gathering, utilizing “virtual” as a synonym for “not real.” But that is neither my experience nor understanding. Over many years of being with persons on Skype and Zoom, there is clearly a sense of Being’s Presence when we are consciously present with one another. This “created thing” of the internet is not a wall inhibiting real presence but a new threshold. Being is creatively manifesting itself in a mode that is novel and must be learned through experience. Too often prejudicial doctrine prevents us from listening to and learning from what our own hearts and bodies are experiencing. I continually encounter via Zoom participants feeding and really being fed by one another, as they learn to become attuned to the Presence of Being manifesting here and now in a new way. The Dynamic Reality of Being – Nothing “Virtual” about It “Virtual” is not simply a misnomer when it comes to accurately describing “being with one another” via a new modality, it is deeply mistaken about the very nature of Reality. When we are consciously present with one another, whatever the modality, we are Really with one another. There is nothing “virtual” about the experience. The modality, such as the internet, significantly shapes the experience. That is true. And we must learn to discern the Presence of Being, of Holy Mystery, within this new form. How we are present to Being adapts with the circumstances – but that is always the case. Each modality of the presence of Being has its strengths and weaknesses. However, as humans of Being, our hearts, minds, and bodies are always already in union with one another (communion). Our task is to discover how that is happening in this new modality. Gaze gratefully up into the heavens above or deep within the one lying beside you. Share a congregational meal via Zoom, or coffee for two within a six-foot arc of loving-kindness. As humans of Being we are eucharistic by nature and communion is our relational Reality. The grace within Covid is the discovery of learning to respond and be attuned to the circumstances that the dynamic Reality of Being offers. We are gratefully learning to participate in real communion in a new modality. Our maturation lies in our practice of sensing into this new modality of Being’s presence and discovering how to awaken to its vitality. ~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. Read online here About the Author Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including I Have Called You Friends, Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms, and My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You and Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland. Visit Kevin’s Blog: Essential Living: For The Soul’s Journey. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Matt I'm an interested non-believer who is very fond of progressive faith traditions and their communities. I just finished reading the chapter in the book Kissing Fish on "Evil and Theodicy" because that is one of two biggest stumbling blocks to faith of any kind for me (the other is that I am extremely hesitant to infer any kind of divine being as an explanation for anything, out of fear that it might prove to be a god-of-the-gaps argument). I have to say that I have more respect for panentheism than classical theism because it at last respects the problem of evil and suffering more than classical theism. However, I want to ask a question: can God (from a panentheistic view) perform a miracle in history such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus? A: By Rev. Roger Wolsey Dear Matt, I'm delighted that you're reading my book and that you are resonating with the theology I am suggesting in that chapter. Different panentheists may answer your question differently. Many progressive Christians embrace the idea of a spiritual resurrection of Jesus instead of a physical one. It was a spiritually resurrected Jesus that Saul encountered on his famed road to Damascus, and if it was good enough for Paul, it's good enough for us! As a panentheist who embraces process theology, I would say, no - God isn't able to violate the laws of physics and "do a physical resurrection" - at least not as that's traditionally understood. I would say, however, that God and certain humans co-creatively "resurrected" Jesus within the life of those early followers of Jesus who were grieving his death - through remembrances and epiphanies such as the one that happened on the road to Emmaus. They came to realize that the truth of the Way that Jesus had been teaching (the way of compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness, restorative justice, mercy and loving-kindness) really and truly does provide vital and transformative life - abundant and eternal. And that it can't be killed. Those who came to this realization are those who Jesus continues to "live in" and as such, they, collectively, are the living Body of Christ. So, in a way, that is a physical resurrection - embodied in the lives of the community of believers. ~ Rev. Roger Wolsey Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Roger Wolsey is a United Methodist pastor who resides in Grand Junction, CO. Roger is author of Kissing Fish: Christianity for people who don’t like Christianity and blogs for Patheos as The Holy Kiss and serves on the Board of Directors of ProgressiveChristianity.Org. Roger became “a Christian on purpose” during his college years and he experienced a call to ordained ministry two years after college. He values the Wesleyan approach to the faith and, as a certified spiritual director, he seeks to help others grow and mature. Roger enjoys yoga; playing trumpet; motorcycling; and camping with his son. He served as the Director of the Wesley Foundation campus ministry at the University of Colorado in Boulder for 14 years, and has served as pastor of churches in Minnesota, Iowa, and currently serves as the pastor of Fruita UMC in Colorado, and also serves as the "CRM" (Congregational Resource Minister/Church Consultant) for the Utah/Western Colorado District of the Mountain Sky Conference. | | | | | | | | 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! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Advent is here! The season of Advent begins tomorrow. Each year, as we hear the familiar stories of Jesus’ birth, we are challenged anew to see how radical they really are. Matthew lifts up women in Jesus’ genealogy and portrays the Holy Family as refugees who flee to Egypt. Luke portrays Jesus’ birth in a manger surrounded by animals and lowly shepherds. Regardless of the historicity of these events, reading the stories reminds us each year that Jesus’ ministry was to those who were marginalized by society. Advent acts as an invitation for us to reflect on how we relate today to those who find themselves in similar circumstances to the people in the birth narratives. How is it that we care for those who are oppressed or impoverished on both personal and system levels? At Progressing Spirit and ProgressiveChristianity.org we strive to give you resources so that you can engage with these questions on a deeper level, personally or within your faith community. However, to continue to do this, we need your support. This Advent, we hope that you’ll consider supporting the work of Progressing Spirit and ProgressiveChristianity.org. May you have a meaningful Advent that is filled with hope, peace, joy, and love. | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the New Testament, Part XIX: How the Synagogue Shaped the Gospel of Mark Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong April 8, 2010 Has it ever occurred to you that Mark, the first gospel to be written, was in fact a Jewish book created in the synagogue and organized according to the liturgical pattern of synagogue worship? Such an idea sounds very strange to modern Christian people for it carries our imaginations far beyond the boundaries inside which we Christians are comfortable. I would like, however, in this column to show you that this claim is in fact accurate. The first thing we need to embrace in order to study the gospels properly is the history of anti-Semitism in the Christian Church. I learned most of my anti-Semitism in my Sunday school as a child. In my printed Sunday school material I was never introduced to a good Jew! All of the Jews in the Jesus story appeared to me to be sinister and hostile; the bad guys in the drama, always out to get Jesus. They had names that I was taught to disrespect like Judas Iscariot, Annas, Caiaphas, Sadducees, Pharisees and scribes. No one in my Sunday school ever told me that Jesus was a Jew. When I saw pictures of him, he looked rather Nordic, with blond hair, blue eyes and a fair skin. I thought he must have been a Swede! I was also never told that the twelve disciples were Jews, that Paul and Mary Magdalene were Jews, that all of the writers of the books in the Bible were Jews, with the only possible exception being Luke, who appears to have been born a Gentile, but to have converted to Judaism. Our cultural anti-Semitism has actually served to blind us to the deep roots in Judaism that the Christian story possesses. All Christians are “spiritual Semites.” Judaism is the womb in which we were conceived and the faith tradition in which Christianity was nurtured until the church and the synagogue parted company in a rather unpleasant manner around the year 88 CE. Embrace that date if you will. The Christian movement did not separate itself from Judaism until some 58 years after the crucifixion of Jesus! This means that, at the very least, the gospel of Mark and the gospel of Matthew were written before the Christians separated from the synagogue. While Luke’s gospel may have come after the split, it is based so deeply on Mark that it too bears the stamp of the time when Christians and Jews both worshiped together Sabbath by Sabbath in the synagogue. The disciples of Jesus at this time were not called “Christians” but “The Followers of the Way,” and they were regarded by the Orthodox power center of Judaism as a group of Jewish Revisionists who were dedicated to incorporating Jesus into the ongoing Jewish story as prophets like Isaiah, Amos and Micah had themselves once been incorporated. All of this means that the primary place the stories of Jesus were remembered and recalled during the “oral period” of Christian history was in the synagogue at a Sabbath day service. In that liturgy, first the Torah and then the prophets would be read, interspersed with Psalms. Next, the assembled worshipers would be solicited for their comments on the scripture readings. In this manner, the disciples of Jesus recalled events and teachings in Jesus’ life and related these to the lessons just read. Soon the scriptures began to be understood by these disciples as pointing to Jesus and even to being fulfilled in Jesus. Inevitably, these Jesus stories were also incorporated into the annual cycle of feasts and fasts regularly observed in the synagogue. Ultimately, forming a consistent and set body of material, these stories were gathered together in the order of the Jewish liturgical year. It was this custom that ultimately shaped the gospel of Mark. With this order in place in Mark, when Matthew and Luke used Mark as the basis of their volumes they inevitably adopted the same liturgical frame of reference. Even with Mark in common, Matthew and Luke differed since they reflected two very different Jewish world views, Matthew being traditional and Luke reflecting the world of dispersed Jews into whose life gentiles were constantly coming. Still the first three gospels had so many similarities that the three of them came to be known as the “synoptic gospels,” the reflections of those who had seen (optic) with (syn) their own eyes. While that eyewitness claim is now dismissed as factually accurate, the essential unity and internal dependency of these three gospels is still widely asserted. Matthew has in fact included about 90% of Mark in his narrative and most of it almost verbatim. Luke, a bit less dependent on Mark, has still included about 50% of Mark’s content in his narrative. Both of these later gospels also adopt Mark’s outline, which was the telling of the Jesus story against the background of a one-year cycle of synagogue liturgical observances. That is why each of these gospels presents Jesus’ public ministry as a one year phenomenon — not because that ministry was one year long, but because the story of his public life, from his baptism to his crucifixion, was told against the background of a one year synagogue cycle. Unfortunately, this background material is not seen unless and until a reader is knowledgeable about that liturgical pattern. Let me try to lift it to the awareness of my readers. The climax of Mark is the story of the passion and crucifixion of Jesus. In Mark, almost 40% of his gospel deals with the last week in the life of Jesus. Of Mark’s 16 chapters, chapters one to ten are dedicated to the life of Jesus from his baptism up to his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, five days prior to Good Friday and just seven days prior to the story of the resurrection. That last week becomes the context of chapters 11-16. To draw the contrast even more sharply, the story of the last twenty-four hours of Jesus’ earthly life consumes 105 verses of Mark’s text, while the Easter story is relegated to only eight verses. The first and most obvious fact is that the crucifixion of Jesus is told against the background of the Jewish observance of the Passover celebration. Jesus had been identified as the new paschal lamb by Paul when he wrote some fifteen years before Mark that “Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed for us (I Cor. 5:7).” People have assumed for centuries that the crucifixion had occurred during the Passover season when the fact was that it was more probable that the Passover had been used by the followers of Jesus to interpret the death of Jesus and that this is what pulled the two observances together. There is a body of data in the gospels that suggests that the crucifixion occurred not in the spring, but rather in the fall of the year. (That data is beyond the scope of this column, but for those who might be interested I outlined it in my book: Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes) The death of the paschal lamb was believed by the Jews to have broken the power of death at the time of the Exodus. The death of Jesus was believed by his disciples to have broken the power of death at the time of his cross and resurrection. So, the story of the death of Jesus was purposefully designed to be observed during the Passover season. That was not history so much as it was liturgy. Once we connect the Passover with the crucifixion, it is possible to see that, in the whole gospel of Mark, the story of Jesus is being retold against the events of the Jewish holy days. So place the crucifixion of Jesus at the time of the Passover and then roll Mark’s gospel backward across the synagogue’s liturgical year and it becomes obvious that this is how Mark organized his gospel. The Jewish celebration, about three months prior to Passover, is called Dedication or Hanukkah. This holy day recalls the time when the light of God was restored to the Temple during the period of the Maccabees. The story in Mark’s gospel that occurs at exactly that time is the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration in which the light of God falls not on the Temple as the Jews asserted, but on Jesus first and then Moses and Elijah, transfiguring them all. This story further suggests that Moses, a symbol for the Law, and Elijah, a symbol for the prophets, are subsumed into the meaning of Jesus, who is then interpreted as the new Temple. Presumably, the old Temple, which had been destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, was no more and the disciples of Jesus were interpreting him as the new meeting place between God and human life. If one keeps rolling Mark backward, the next Jewish feast is Sukkoth or Tabernacles which was the eight-day celebration of the harvest. The Jesus story which Mark relates in chapter four comes exactly at that place where Sukkoth is being observed. It is the parable of the sower, who sowed the seed on four different kinds of soil, yielding four different types of harvest, and is then followed by Jesus’ explanation of that parable. Indeed, this chapter with its clear harvest theme contains sufficient material to cover the eight days of the harvest festival. Keep rolling Mark backward and one comes next to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, observed some five days before Sukkoth begins. Here one discovers in Mark’s chapters two and three a series of healing, cleansing stories, including the call of Levi into discipleship from the unclean world of being a tax collector for the Gentile conqueror. These are perfect Jesus stories to carry the meaning of Yom Kippur. Once again, Mark’s order fits the synagogue’s liturgical year. Finally, Mark runs out with chapter one that occurs at the time when the Jews were celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The Jews observed that day by blowing the shofar, gathering the people, announcing that the Kingdom of God was at hand and urging them to prepare for it by repenting. Here, Mark’s gospel opens with the story of John the Baptist, portrayed as the human shofar, gathering the people, announcing to them that the Kingdom of God is dawning in the life of Jesus and urging them to prepare for his coming with repentance. The unrecognized organizing principle in the first gospel to be written reveals that Mark has crafted Jesus stories for use in the synagogue from Rosh Hashanah to Passover, or for six and a half months of the Jewish liturgical year. Have you ever wondered why Mark is shorter than Matthew or Luke? Mark only covered six and a half months of the calendar year. Both Matthew and Luke would stretch Mark by providing stories for the other five and a half months. First, grasp the concept. Then we will fill in the details. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Planning Christmas Gifts for your Children and Grandchildren? Our children's curriculum is the perfect answer! A Joyful Path is truly progressive curriculum that is nature centered, joy-full, compassionate, and intelligent. This behavior over belief curriculum is non-dogmatic, inter-spiritual, and heart centered with an emphasis on the teachings of Jesus and how to follow them in today’s world. Full year versions are available in Hard Copy, DVD and PDF. On sale until December 10th at 50% OFF! Use Coupon Code TEACH50 at checkout. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Re: [Dialogue] 5 ICA talks
by Robertson Work 30 Nov '20

30 Nov '20

Thank you, Jan! I have appreciated our long collaboration on this with ICA, UNDP, social artistry, and more. Please stay safe and healthy. Rob ............................................. Author page for my books: https://www.amazon.com/Robertson-Work/e/B075612GBF Blogsite: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/ Website: https://www.robertsonwork.com/ ________________________________ From: Janet Sanders <janetasanders(a)hotmail.com> Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 9:12 AM To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>; ica-dialogue(a)igc.topica.com <ica-dialogue(a)igc.topica.com> Cc: Robertson Work <warkers(a)msn.com> Subject: Re: 5 ICA talks Wonderful to have these talks/insights all together. Deeply appreciate and honour your commitment to providing a new form of leadership. Jan Get Outlook for iOS<https://eur05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Faka.ms%2F…> ________________________________ From: OE <oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> on behalf of Robertson Work via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Sent: Saturday, November 28, 2020 10:47:59 AM To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>; ica-dialogue(a)igc.topica.com <ica-dialogue(a)igc.topica.com> Cc: Robertson Work <warkers(a)msn.com> Subject: [Oe List ...] 5 ICA talks Dear OE/EI/ICA colleague, Thought you might enjoy the paperback of my latest book which is now available. It includes five ICA talks: 1994, Lonavala; 1995, Seattle; 2010, Chicago; 2012, Kathmandu; and 2019, Chicago. There are also UN, Building Creative Communities Conference, and other talks. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578780038<https://eur05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…> THE CRITICAL DECADE: Calls for Ecological, Compassionate Leadership: Work, Robertson: 9780578780030: Amazon.com: Books<https://eur05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…> THE CRITICAL DECADE: Calls for Ecological, Compassionate Leadership [Work, Robertson] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. THE CRITICAL DECADE: Calls for Ecological, Compassionate Leadership www.amazon.com Please stay safe, healthy, and happy, Rob ............................................. Author page for my books: https://www.amazon.com/Robertson-Work/e/B075612GBF<https://eur05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazo…> Blogsite: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/<https://eur05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcompassio…> Website: https://www.robertsonwork.com/<https://eur05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rober…>

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Re: [Dialogue] 5 ICA talks
by John C 28 Nov '20

28 Nov '20

Way to go, Rob. Looking forward to it! Gracious Holidays, John & Lynda From: Dialogue <dialogue-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> on behalf of ICA Dialogue List <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Reply-To: ICA Dialogue List <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Date: Saturday, November 28, 2020 at 1:51 PM To: ICA Dialogue List <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: Robertson <warkers(a)msn.com> Subject: [Dialogue] 5 ICA talks Dear OE/EI/ICA colleague, Thought you might enjoy the paperback of my latest book which is now available. It includes five ICA talks: 1994, Lonavala; 1995, Seattle; 2010, Chicago; 2012, Kathmandu; and 2019, Chicago. There are also UN, Building Creative Communities Conference, and other talks. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578780038 THE CRITICAL DECADE: Calls for Ecological, Compassionate Leadership: Work, Robertson: 9780578780030: Amazon.com: Books<https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578780038> THE CRITICAL DECADE: Calls for Ecological, Compassionate Leadership [Work, Robertson] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. THE CRITICAL DECADE: Calls for Ecological, Compassionate Leadership www.amazon.com Please stay safe, healthy, and happy, Rob ............................................. Author page for my books: https://www.amazon.com/Robertson-Work/e/B075612GBF Blogsite: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/ Website: https://www.robertsonwork.com/

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5 ICA talks
by Robertson Work 28 Nov '20

28 Nov '20

Dear OE/EI/ICA colleague, Thought you might enjoy the paperback of my latest book which is now available. It includes five ICA talks: 1994, Lonavala; 1995, Seattle; 2010, Chicago; 2012, Kathmandu; and 2019, Chicago. There are also UN, Building Creative Communities Conference, and other talks. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578780038 THE CRITICAL DECADE: Calls for Ecological, Compassionate Leadership: Work, Robertson: 9780578780030: Amazon.com: Books<https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578780038> THE CRITICAL DECADE: Calls for Ecological, Compassionate Leadership [Work, Robertson] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. THE CRITICAL DECADE: Calls for Ecological, Compassionate Leadership www.amazon.com Please stay safe, healthy, and happy, Rob ............................................. Author page for my books: https://www.amazon.com/Robertson-Work/e/B075612GBF Blogsite: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/ Website: https://www.robertsonwork.com/

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11/26/2020, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Roger Wolsey: Ball of Confusion; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 28 Nov '20

28 Nov '20

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p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv3014297744 #yiv3014297744templateBody .yiv3014297744mcnTextContent, #yiv3014297744 #yiv3014297744templateBody .yiv3014297744mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv3014297744 #yiv3014297744templateFooter .yiv3014297744mcnTextContent, #yiv3014297744 #yiv3014297744templateFooter .yiv3014297744mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ball of Confusion | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Roger Wolsey November 24, 2020 “Ball of Confusion – that’s what the World is Today – Hey Hey” ~ The Temptations, 1970 The strangest experience during my four years of studies at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver took place in the autumn of 1995. Dr. Ed Everding taught Religious Education and on that particular day, we students discovered that the door to our large classroom was locked and the glass on the sides of the doors had been covered with dark construction paper. We waited out in the hallway until we heard the door click and we slowly entered the room. The lights were off, weird music was playing on a boom box, there was a strobe light flickering, a lava lamp or two propped up on stools, and we saw that most all of the tables and chairs were either upside down or on their sides. There were strange things suspended from the ceiling tiles, there were odd posters randomly posted to the walls, most upside down… , and there were a few mannequins, as well as a couple of people who sort of looked like mannequins. One of them was our professor, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, complete with a lei around his neck, holding what appeared to be a Mai Tai drink in one hand – ignoring us completely. The other mannequin may or may not have been a person, one student felt bold and gave “it” a wet willie. It wasn’t a mannequin, the person shifted, yet kept their aloof composure. Oops. After 10 minutes or so, the professor turned down the strange music and he invited us to turn the desks right side up and we sat down. As we did, he went to the chalkboard and wrote a word upon it that I’d never encountered before, “A N O M I E” and then he underlined it, saying it aloud, “An-O-Mee.” He went on to explain that the concept of anomie was coined by sociologist Émile Durkheim in 1893. It’s the idea that there can be conditions in which the norms, values, and assumptions within a society are no longer in place and the people feel a profoundly unmoored dis-ease. This dis-ease about things tends to lead to a felt sense of alienation, estrangement, and uncertainty about, well, everything. And, in many cases, it can lead persons to feel devastated and even to self-harm and suicide. “Man [Humankind] can’t become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him of all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.” Such alienation and estrangement from self, friends, family, community, and institutions is rampant at present in the U.S. and it is affecting many people’s ability to seek or be in relationships and to seek or maintain jobs. There is no doubt a correlation to the recent rise in suicide we’ve been witnessing. I would suggest that the United States in 2020 is experiencing anomie, Indeed, a case can be made that many Americans were experiencing it upon the U.S. waging an unjust and senseless war in Iraq; followed by the election of president Barack Obama. The phenomenon of having a black person elected to such a high office, coupled with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that honors marriage for same sex couples in all 50 states – in tandem with many working class people struggling as manufacturing jobs were disappearing – created a perfect storm for the populist movement that culminated in the unabashedly bigoted, xenophobic, and anti-intellectual administration of Donald Trump. This sense of anomie only increased over the four years of the Trump era – and reached fever pitch this year with the arrival of the twin pandemics of civil unrest in response to a mismanaged criminal justice system and to a mismanaged response to the highly contagious Covid-19 virus. Many hard working people who had fancied themselves as empowered by the current president (including his boorish and uncivil rhetoric and behavior) were loathe to discover that their ability to keep working their way up the social ladder and pulling themselves up by their respective bootstraps had been undermined by forced shutdowns of the economy. Many of these same people felt indignant when seeing mass protests and the (sort of) related riots and looting and found themselves rallying against the possible rise of a “socialist state” whereby the “values of the elites” will be imposed onto them. While many of us may well feel that such fears are unfounded and indeed irrational and baseless, as Bishop George Berkeley put it, esse est percepi - what people perceive is the reality that they experience. Which brings to mind another Latin phrase, horror vacui – “nature abhors a vacuum” (attributed to Aristotle). Close to half of the U.S. population have apparently been swayed by the propaganda coming from certain quarters and they no longer believe in the veracity of the mainstream news, the legitimacy of political institutions, the credibility of scientists, nor do they even allow for any goodwill, wisdom, or merit from the mainline Church (including from the Pope). Many, too many, of these persons are painting the mainstream press and media as “fake news”; and many, too many, of these persons are exiling themselves from Facebook and shifting instead to alternative platforms such as Parler which ironically claim to be forums that “don’t censor” – when in reality, they are echo chambers for ideologues who don’t wish to be challenged by inconvenient truths or dissenting opinions – thus, filling the perceived vacuum. Such persons have been persuaded to believe that a frankly right of center neo-liberal such as Joe Biden (and the Democratic Party) is “socialist” and/or “communist.” And many of these people have also been convinced that true Christianity means being opposed to abortions, homosexuality, and universal health care. Indeed, that belief has effectively become a shibboleth for the testing of who is and who isn’t a “real Christian.” It isn’t an overstatement to suggest that the U.S. hasn’t been this polarized and divided since the Civil War in the 1860s. The truth is, many Americans would not consider Bishop John Spong – nor we, his readers, fans, and followers – to be authentic Christians, nor as good Americans (for those of us who happen to reside in the U.S.). What to do? Well, we could do the typical human thing and respond to “their” tribalism with increased tribalism of our own – battening down the hatches, and shoring ourselves up for what “true progressive Christians believe” etc. – effectively creating creeds, dogmas, and shibboleths of our own. However, I am writing to advise against that. The last thing our society (in the U.S, and in the larger world) needs is another increase in harsher demarcations between “us” and “them.” The last thing we need is increased polarization. The last thing we need is more lines drawn in the sand. We could even attempt to seek ways to engage with people who think and believe differently than we do with enhanced skills and techniques – see “Ending the Civil War.” Over the past decade, however, I’ve grown to be less religious, and more, “spiritual and religious.” I’ve come to embrace mysticism as part of my life and way of being a Christian follower of Jesus. And from this place of connection to Divine Source, I’m encouraging us to not so much seek demands, platforms, and agendas lobbying the incoming Biden administration - as good and sensible to us as they may seem - instead, to deepen into ourselves and our divinity. Now this isn’t a firm either/or, it’s of course a both/and, but what I’m urging is a prioritized emphasis that has us centering and grounding ourselves in the Divine - more than in ceaseless activism that comes from a cerebral place. I’m inviting us to feel into ourselves, embody the love that we seek to see in the world, and from this place of love engage in mindful, conscience, and prayerful action. Dr. Cornel West famously said, “Never forget that justice [politics] is what love looks like in public.” True enough. But activism for justice that isn’t centered in Divine love may not be just at all. As Gandhi put it, “there is no way to peace, peace is the way.” And as the apostle Paul put it, “ If I speak in the tongues of [humans] or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” I’m hoping we are all sensing bells of truth and recognition when we hear those words. With these profound insights in mind, I urge us all to devote the next 12 months to deepened inner-work. To increased spiritual practice. To spiritual disciplines. To embracing the mystic truth of our divinity. To remembering who and Whose we are. To truly knowing, deep in our guts, that we “live and move and have our being” in the God who is Love - and that ultimately who we are is love. I’ve written on this forum in the past urging progressive Christianity to not “be so high/heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good.” Example, “Where the Rubber Hits the Road”, and “Putting the Shark back in the Tank”. And I’ve also shared in the past about the beauty and merits of progressive Christians embracing spiritual practice, spirituality, and mysticism (seeking direct connection to Source) – e.g. "A Call to Spirituality and Religious Participation" and, “Making Friends with Silence”. Yet, I’m now feeling called to restate this as an ardent *need* for progressive Christians and the cause of progressive Christianity. If we are to be relevant – to ourselves, our loved ones, our churches and/or communities, we need to do our work. They need us to shift from our heads and more toward our hearts. More toward a felt sense of authenticity and compassion that others can palpably feel – that isn’t coming from a place of “new wording” or “re-branding”, but rather, from the hearts, our guts, our very beings – the authentic truth of who we are. And this isn’t just “light” work – it also means engaging in some shadow work of our own. People won’t trust us unless they know that we really know ourselves – including our darkness. As Carl Jung put it, “People will do anything no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” Moreover, people who we disagree with won’t trust us unless we recognize that there is that of God within them too – unless we too recognize their divinity. The late Catholic (and rather progressive) theologian Karl Rahner said “The Christian[s] of the future will be a mystic or he [we] will not exist at all.” I agree. I’ll close with some inspiration from the mystic poet Rumi,”You are not but a drop of the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” “I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.” May we know that God is with us and within us as we do our sacred work. ~ Rev. Roger Wolsey p.s. Here’s a mystic pondering of a passage in the Gospel of John from a progressive Christian perspective. Enjoy. “Holy Yogi Jesus Was a Walrus and so are You” . Read online here About the Author Rev. Roger Wolsey is a United Methodist pastor who resides in Grand Junction, CO. Roger is author of Kissing Fish: Christianity for people who don’t like Christianity and blogs for Patheos as The Holy Kiss and serves on the Board of Directors of ProgressiveChristianity.Org. Roger became “a Christian on purpose” during his college years and he experienced a call to ordained ministry two years after college. He values the Wesleyan approach to the faith and, as a certified spiritual director, he seeks to help others grow and mature. Roger enjoys yoga; playing trumpet; motorcycling; and camping with his son. He served as the Director of the Wesley Foundation campus ministry at the University of Colorado in Boulder for 14 years, and has served as pastor of churches in Minnesota, Iowa, and currently serves as the pastor of Fruita UMC in Colorado, and also serves as the "CRM" (Congregational Resource Minister/Church Consultant) for the Utah/Western Colorado District of the Mountain Sky Conference. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Dean Can’t say I disagree on your article: A White Man Makes the Case for Reparations, but it raises at least one question. When God’s people chased inhabitants out of the ‘Promised Land’ I don’t recall any discussion of reparations for the displaced people. Perhaps that is our rationale (excuse) for claiming reparations as a non-issue. A: By Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer Dear Dean, Thank you for this question. It is an interesting one. My response will reveal my overall view of Scripture. I see our sacred texts not as God’s literal words revealed to some human scribe who simply served as an empty vessel recording all that God poured into her. I see them as the faithful and authentic testimonies of those who experienced something sacred in the otherwise profane matters of human existence. I see them as creative, poetic, and memetic – products of human experience and imagination with the purpose of shaping hearts and minds and of generating a fundamental faith in a God with whom we entered into covenant and from whom we received the promise of protection, comfort, and eventually the promise of eternal life. There were no cameras to record events, no journalists trained to record history without bias. With every story told, there was an agenda – a need to perpetuate along with the story a bias, be that legal, moral, or ecclesial. In the best of circumstances, that bias reflected the perceived will of God – but not always. Biblical records of the conquest of the land we call promised are far from historically accurate. They are idealized accounts filtered through the lens of the victors who wanted to attach to their victory and conquest both the aid of God and the approval of God. White slave owners did the same thing. They attached divine mandate and approval to their conquest and enslavement of captured African natives. They mythologized their white skin and dehumanized black skin. That myth will survive as longs as whites maintain control of the public narrative. In the same way, Biblical authors justified the conquest and enslavement of another people by attaching God to the story and making their God the agent of their bloodlust. Passages that describe God as commanding the enslavement and slaughter of innocent children and livestock does not sound to me like the God we would come to know in the writings and teachings of Jesus. What does sound more divine to me are the invitations for peoples of the Earth to love their neighbor, to turn the other cheek, to pray for those who persecute you, to love your enemy, to give to the poor and the widow and the orphan. When it is written in the epistle of John that “God is love,” I take that as instructive. Scripture that reveals a God whom we know as love I receive as authentic and revelatory. On the other hand, passages that cannot be reconciled with the God whom we know as love are little more to me than the human attribution of our capacity and lust for evil to God. ~ Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer is the author of two published books, Beyond Resistance: the Institutional Church Meets the Postmodern World and Steeplejacking: How the Christian Right Hijacked Mainstream Religion. He is a recipient of Eden Seminary's "Shalom Award," given by the student body for a lifetime of committed work for peace and justice. John currently serves as the 9th General Minister of the United Church of Christ. | | | | | | | | 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! | | | | | | This week's donation request | | | | | | | | | | We Are Grateful For You! This year, it may seem odd to talk about gratitude. For many of us, it has been hard to stay focused on being thankful when it feels like we have given up so much. Yet, perhaps we can use this time to assess what is really important in our lives and ensure that we are appreciating every moment. Indeed, tasks —like going to the grocery store —that once seemed mundane can now be a major outing! As we approach Thanksgiving, many are modifying or even forgoing usual celebrations in order to truly care for the ones we love. During this week, we hope that you will find time to assess those things for which you are grateful and give thanks. Here at ProgressiveChristianity.org we are giving thanks for you and your ongoing support. Without you we could not function as an organization. If the resources that we provide are on your list of things for which you are grateful, we hope that you might consider making a donation to ensure that we can continue to be a beacon of Progressive Christian light for years to come. We hope that you have a great Thanksgiving week! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the New Testament, Part XVIII: Mark, The First Gospel Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong April 1, 2010 The original gospel, the one we know as Mark, was written, I believe, after the fall of Jerusalem and its subsequent destruction by the Roman army under the command of a general named Titus, in 70 CE. It was the climax of a war that began in Galilee in 66 and would finally culminate in a mass suicide of the final defenders of the Jewish cause at a place called Masada in 73. The echoes of this fall of the “eternal” city are heard in a number of places throughout Mark’s text. The apocalyptic words recorded in Chapter 13 seem to describe the pain endured by the residents of the holy city in that catastrophe and includes the suggestion that they must flee into the hills of Judea and perhaps even to Galilee. The story of Jesus being transfigured on a mountain in Chapter 9 also suggests that in the minds of his disciples he has now replaced the Temple as the meeting place between God and human life. On him the “shekinah,” the light of God, that once was believed to have enveloped the Temple as a sign of God’s presence now shines on him. I do not believe that a story like that of the Transfiguration would have been written unless the Temple itself had not already been destroyed. Even the rise of the story of a traitor named Judas, introduced for the first time in Christian history by Mark’s gospel, suggests that those Jews, who were followers of Jesus, wanted to put some distance between themselves and the Temple authorities. To make the name of the traitor identical to the name of the now defeated nation, Judah, over which the Temple authorities had once exercised authority, accomplished that task. These are just a few of the things that cause me to date the writing of the first gospel around the years 71-72. We have previously suggested that the synagogue had to be the setting in which the story of Jesus was remembered, recalled and retold during the time that we call the “oral period” of Christian history. That assertion is based on the fact that when this first gospel appears the story of Jesus has already been wrapped inside the sacred scriptures of the Jews. This could only have happened in the synagogue, since that would be the only place in which first-century people would ever hear the Jewish Scriptures read, taught or engaged. There was no such thing in that day as a “family Bible.” Books, which had to be copied by hand, were far too expensive to be individually owned, so the scrolls of the Hebrew Scriptures were community property — treasured, kept and read only in the sacred setting of the synagogue. When Mark’s Gospel appeared, its text revealed that the memory of Jesus had already been incorporated into those Jewish scriptures. The story of Jesus had been orally transmitted in and through the synagogue. Mark reveals this in the first verse of his gospel when he announces that this is the gospel of Jesus Christ “as it is written in the prophets.” Then he starts his story by quoting first Malachi and then Isaiah. When this gospel introduces John the Baptist for the first time it is clear that John has already been interpreted as the Old Testament figure of Elijah, who in the expectations of the Jews had to precede the coming of the messiah. John is clothed by Mark in the raiment of Elijah, camel’s hair and a girdle around his waist. He is placed in the desert where Elijah was said to dwell. He was given the diet of locusts and wild honey that the Hebrew Scriptures said was the diet that Elijah ate. Then Mark relates the story of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River at the hands of John the Baptist. That was the moment, Mark asserts, when the power of God in the form of the Holy Spirit entered into the human Jesus and he was acclaimed to be God’s son. Mark has obviously never heard of the story of the virgin birth, which offers a different way for this divine presence to enter Jesus. Next Mark moves on to tell the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness for forty days, but he gives no content to those temptations. That was destined to come in later gospels that expanded Mark with developing stories. One can see the oral period at work here, for in the synagogue on the Sabbath first the law was read, then the prophets and then the disciples of Jesus would relate Jesus stories that seemed appropriate to those readings. Increasingly they saw in the Hebrew Scriptures the anticipation of the messiah’s life and when they became convinced that Jesus was the expected messiah, they began to interpret these scriptures as anticipatory of their day and the life of Jesus became more and more the one to whom all the Hebrew Scriptures pointed. The second clue that reveals the synagogue as the place in which the story of Jesus was remembered, told and retold is that the gospel of Mark reflects the liturgical year of the Jews and thus has an appropriate story about Jesus designed to be read at each of the great liturgical observances of that year. One cannot see this, however, if one is not familiar with these liturgical synagogue patterns relived annually by the Jews. So let me file, almost by title, the major events recalled in the worship life of the Jewish people during their liturgy. The first worship event in the synagogue, which marked liturgically the birth of the Jewish nation, was called “the Passover.” It re-enacted annually the Jewish flight from slavery in Egypt and thus their beginnings as a separate and distinct people. Passover is to the Jews what the Fourth of July is to the citizens of the United States. It was celebrated on the 14th and 15th days of the Jewish month of Nisan which, according to the book of Leviticus, was the first month of the Jewish calendar, although Jewish practice was not consistent as to when the year began. The second great observance of the Jewish year was Shavuot, or Pentecost, which comes fifty days after Passover, hence the name Pentecost, which means fifty days. On this day the Jews commemorated God’s giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, and it was observed in traditional Jewish circles with a 24-hour vigil dedicated to recalling and celebrating the beauty and wonder of the Torah. The law represented to the Jews God’s greatest gift to God’s people. After Shavuot there were no major holidays in the Jewish year for about four months. Then in the seventh month of their calendar, a month known as Tishri, three major observances occurred in rapid succession. The celebration began on the first day of Tishri with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah was observed by blowing the shofar, the ram’s horn, to gather the people together. When they gathered the announcement was made that the Kingdom of God was at hand and the people were urged to prepare for its arrival. It was the promise of each new year that the Kingdom of God would someday come. On the tenth day of Tishri came the observance of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This was a day of deep penitence that included both confession and sacrifice. Liturgically this was an attempt to cleanse the people of their sins and thus to allow them to have their sins borne away, which would, of course, leave them fit to enter the presence of God as only the High Priest could now do and he only once a year at Yom Kippur. Beginning on the fifteenth day of the month of Tishri and lasting for eight days was the Festival of Booths, also called Tabernacles, or Sukkoth. This was the harvest festival, the Jewish day of Thanksgiving, but it also recalled the years of Jewish history when the people were homeless wanderers in the wilderness between Egypt and the land they regarded as their promised destiny. It was, therefore, observed by the erection of booths or temporary shelters, which recalled their wilderness years. Sukkoth was the happiest and most anticipated holiday of the Jewish year. It was also the last Jewish festival for about two months. When the month of Kislev arrived, located as it was in the dead of winter, the Jews observed a “festival of lights” known then as Dedication, but known today as Hanukkah. This was a celebration born in the Maccabean period of Jewish history (167-63 BCE) and it recalled the restoration of the light of God to the Temple after it had been defiled by the Seleucid King of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes, who was defeated in battle by Judas Maccabeus. The end of the Jewish year came in the early spring with the month of Adar, which brought the people back liturgically to the month of Nisan and its celebration of the birth of their nation. Every year the people of the synagogue relived this cycle of feasts and fasts and every year for at least forty years the followers of Jesus, who were still part of the synagogue, thought of him and spoke of him inside this liturgical framework. When the first gospel of Mark was written, this liturgical framework was clearly present and it became, probably quite unconsciously, the organizing principle of Mark’s gospel — and because both Matthew and Luke built their gospels on Mark’s model it became the organizing principle of all three. We know that Mark began the custom of setting the story of the crucifixion inside the celebration of Passover and because of this Jesus was increasingly seen as the new paschal lamb who, like the lamb of Passover, died to dispel the power of death. What we do not see so clearly is that if we attach Mark’s story of Jesus’ passion to the Jewish season of Passover and then roll Mark’s gospel backward across the liturgical year of the Jews, we will discover that an appropriate Jesus narrative falls at exactly the right spot in the gospel to fit the calendar to enable it to illumine the festivals and fasts of the Jewish year and in their proper order. Next week I will develop that correlation, and then I trust it will become clear that Mark was written as a liturgical book to be read in the synagogue with the purpose of revealing Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. It is not a history book. It incorporates the memory of Jesus into the ongoing life of the synagogue. If you, my readers, are like me, then once this key unlocks the story, the gospel of Mark will never be the same. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Lux Divina: A 2020 Advent Journey This e-course for Advent will be a quiet, spacious, reflective time in community, where we will feast on scripture and the teachings of Fr. Thomas Keating and other mystical writers. We will reflect on the great themes of this season as they inform and enrich the contemplative life. Starting November 27th - December 25th. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Reflecting on Giving Thanks, the Spirit of Gratitude
by Ellie Stock 26 Nov '20

26 Nov '20

Dear Folks, Last Sunday, Thanksgiving Sunday (also the Reign of Christ in the Christian Liturgical Calendar), I led Second Presbyterian Church's (St. Louis) Sunday Forum Group, reflecting on Giving Thanks, the Spirit of Gratitude. During the week before the participants were invited to write down/keep a mini journal (list, words, poetry, art, etc.) of their experiences of gratitude each day. The first 15 minutes of the session was prayer and context and the rest was conversation reflecting on our experiences of gratitude. As we participate on this nation's observance of Thanksgiving, I thought I would share this session with you for your own refection and observations of your experiences of gratitude. So, attached is a synopsis of the session. Giving deep thanks for all of you and our years of collegiality. Hope you all have a beautiful day. Blessings! Ellie elliestock(a)aol.com

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Swamp Gravy
by Seth Longacre 26 Nov '20

26 Nov '20

Today, NPR’s Planet Money re-broadcast this episode for Thanksgiving because, well, GRAVY! I commend it to you. thanks to Joy Jinks, Nan and Bill Grow: https://www.npr.org/2020/11/25/939016028/swamp-gravy-updated <https://www.npr.org/2020/11/25/939016028/swamp-gravy-updated> Seth T. Longacre Ashland, OR I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower—the light is my darkness, the Voice in my silence. Helen Keller ———-O0ooo— ———–(——)— ————)–-/—- ————(_/- —-ooo0O—- —-(——)—- —–\-–(– ——\_)-

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11/19/2020, Progressing Spirit, Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhhauer:A White Man Makes the Case for Reparations, Part III`; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 19 Nov '20

19 Nov '20

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Dr. John C. Dorhauer November 19, 2020 “If… African Americans will not be compensated for the massive wrongs and social injuries inflicted upon them by their government, during and after slavery, then there is no chance that America can solve its racial problems.” Randall Robinson, The Debt, p. 204. I enter this quote at the beginning of my final installment of my call to reparations because I want to make one thing clear: while reparations is about righting a wrong, it is also about healing a wounded nation. That wound is the source of great pain not just for African descendant people. It is also the source of great pain for the descendants of European colonialists who perpetrated one of the Earth’s most viscous, effective, and persistent evils. Too many whites argue that slavery is a thing of the past for which present day whites are not responsible. In the previous two essays, I tried to debunk that myth. It is the cause of so much pain today for black and white Americans. In the book Black Rage, we find this: “Americans characteristically are unwilling to think about the past. We are a future-oriented nation, and facing backward is an impediment to progress. Although these attitudes may propel us to the moon, they are deficient when human conflict needs resolution.” (William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs, Black Rage, p. 23) I have been arguing that reparations is, at its core, a call to repair the damage – to seek pathways to resolving a particular human conflict that has opened deep and festering wounds. What abolition and emancipation and civil rights in the hands of well-meaning whites have done is what the prophet Jeremiah spoke about in is 6th chapter: we have cried “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. We have healed the wound of God’s people lightly. What white America often fails to see is that reparations IS the pathway to healing the racial division and, as Robinson says, the only way to “solve its racial problems.” It is the pathway to resolving this enormous human conflict. It is not enough to work hard as whites to assuage our guilt. That is the pathway to crying peace when there is no peace; to healing a wound lightly – enough to stanch the bleeding, but not enough to heal the wound. I have long said that whites in general, and the white church in particular, remain the most instantiated and greatest impediment yet to full racial equity. Without doubt, the greatest stumbling block to full white participation in repairing the damage is their love affair with both wealth and access to wealth. Whites will march. Whites will sing: “We shall overcome;” or “Lift every voice,” or “This land is my land.” Whites will get arrested, seeing this as demonstration of their bona fides, a trophy that demonstrates their commitment to the cause and their willingness to suffer for a couple hours or an overnight stay. Some have even died, entering the struggle with the awareness that there will be a price to pay. What whites have yet to do is sit at the table and talk about how to redistribute wealth and legislate pathways to wealth that do not favor them. This is the point at which white, liberal freedom-riders get off the bus and say, “I have nothing left to give.” They will spend their life telling the story of their commitment, their struggle, their sacrifice. They will cheer the election of a black president and feel some sense of both pride and satisfaction that their sacrifice helped make this happen and heal the wound. But it is a wound healed lightly – and the peace they claim to have created is no peace at all. Donald Trump and the post-Obama world we live in belies the claim that peace has come and that white contributions to racial equity have healed the wound. In the introduction to his landmark book The Possessive Investment in Whiteness,” George Lipsitz says that both public policy and private prejudice have created what he calls “a possessive investment in whiteness.” His very next sentence is the theme statement for his entire book, and really the most definitive and concise explanation for why America is the way it is: “Whiteness has a cash value.” “Whiteness is a delusion, a cultural fiction…. Whiteness is, however, a social fact, an identity created and continued with all-too-real consequences for the distribution of wealth, prestige, and opportunity.” (Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, p.vii) So this is a call to white America to fully heal the wound. Not just the black wound, but the wound that black and white both suffer from together, and that no attachment to wealth will heal. Reparations is the pathway to full healing, to resolving this human conflict, to solving our racial problem. What does that look like? Better minds than mine have wrestled with that and fallen short of the mark. Nonetheless, there are specific recommendations I am willing to make right now. First, let’s talk about HR 40. Sheila Jackson Lee from Texas’ 18th Congressional District has taken up the mantle given to her when John Conyer’s retired. She brought the bill to Congress asking for a commission to be created to study a meaningful pathway to reparations. John Conyers first introduced this bill in 1993, and it has yet to even leave committee, much less make it to the floor for a vote, much less win a majority and be passed on to the Senate for approval, much less be signed into law by the President. This is not a bill calling for reparations, but the creation of a commission to study what reparations would look like. If and when white advocates got behind this and demanded that their legislators support it, vote for it, and pass it, it would make it through and the first small step towards healing would occur. Well, white America? Will we do that? Can we do that? If we will not do even that, it is hard to imagine that we are an ally in the cause of racial equity and racial healing. Aside from supporting and passing HR 40, there are other and more tangible things whites can do or consider right now. As I think about this, there are three places of accumulated or accumulating wealth that can be taxed to support reparations: annual income of white households, accumulated current wealth of white households, and money transferred at death through inheritance. What if every white American were taxed $25 a year for ten years to create a fund for reparations? Or think even bigger. What if for ten years there was a 1% tax assessed to every white American who files for taxes? According to the Selig Center for Economic Growth, the buying power of white Americans in 2018 was $6.5 trillion dollars. 1% of that is $65 billion a year. Do that for ten years. The average white household currently has more than seven times the accumulated wealth in liquidity than the average black household: $130,000 per white household; $19,000 per black household (this is from the 2018 American Community Survey conducted by the US Census Bureau). How much of that can be transferred over the next ten years in the cause of repairing the damage? One of the greatest inhibitors to equal access to wealth is inheritance law. Serious thought should be given to taxing any money that is passed from one white family member to another. A 10% tax charged to all white-inherited wealth for ten years would help alleviate the gap that has accrued from white wealth that has stayed in the family for generations – much of that accrued at a time when blacks were either enslaved, deprived of equal or any education, red-zoned out of housing districts where wealth could be invested in real estate that grew in value, or either deprived of jobs or given lower salaries because of their race. Up to $11.4 million per person of inherited wealth can be exempted from taxes in 2019, and double that if it is a married couple, since that is per person. It is estimated that in the next 20 years, boomers will inherit $68 trillion. How much of that would it make sense to set aside from taxes that could support reparations? Another source of possible funding for reparations would be church properties. What if every white church that closed from this point forward earmarked the proceeds (or a portion of those) from the dissolution of their assets for reparations? The Christian Century magazine estimates that 3,700 churches a year close – or about 1%. Let’s estimate on the conservative side that their remaining property and assets average $1 million. That’s $3.7 billion a year that we could earmark for reparations, or at least some healthy portion of that. The Black Manifesto, quoted in a previous installment, asked for the funds from the white transfer of wealth to go to ten different empowerment opportunities for black families. They were: - The establishment of a Southern Land Bank for blacks who want to establish cooperative farms. - The establishment of four major black-owned and operated publishing and printing industries in the US. - The establishment of black-owned and operated media conglomerates in major cities across the US. - The establishment of a research skill center to research the problems unique to black Americans. - Establishment of a training center for community organizing, photography, filmmaking, TV production, etc. - The support of all welfare agencies that serve black families and the organization and training of all welfare recipients. - The establishment of a National Black Labor Strike and Defense Fund. - The establishment of the International Black Appeal (IBA) for building black owned businesses in the US and Africa. - The establishment of a Black University. - The allocation of funds or planning the budget to implement the demands stated in the Manifesto. This is not offered here as the perfect plan, but to suggest that Funds be set up for and administered by black community leaders that support the ongoing development and propagation of black America. This is not a blueprint. Let’s not get bogged down right now in discussion about whether these particular taxing mechanisms or program developments are the pathway forward. It is only offered here to suggest that we can at least imagine A pathway forward. The question is not CAN whites do this, but WILL whites do it. On the one hand, putting specific recommendations like this on paper risks spending all our time arguing about whether or not these ideas will, can, or should work. On the other hand, NOT putting something on paper keeps this too ethereal and only repeats the mantra we have always heard: it just can’t be done. Well, it can be done. In previous installments on this subject I presented my argument about why it should be done, and this time I simply wanted to show that it CAN be done. Whites need to know there is no pathway through this that comes without pain and sacrifice. Yes, whites have sacrificed something in the past, but never enough. Again, we have healed the wound of the people lightly. This wound will heal, but not without great commitment to full reparations. Money isn’t everything, but it is our love of money that is the root of this evil. Only a committed detachment from that, and an accompanying attachment to wealth and race equity will heal a wound white and black Americans have lived with since whites landed on these shores. Let us work hard to discover the day when we can say, “Peace, peace,” and there is peace, when the wound is healed not lightly but wholly. That is the dream, the hope, the expectation. Thanks for listening. ~ Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer Read online here About the Author Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer was granted a Doctoral Degree in White Privilege Studies in 2007 from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, OH. He also has degrees in Theology and Philosophy. He is the author of two published books, Beyond Resistance: the Institutional Church Meets the Postmodern World and Steeplejacking: How the Christian Right Hijacked Mainstream Religion. He is a recipient of Eden Seminary's "Shalom Award," given by the student body for a lifetime of committed work for peace and justice. John was ordained as a Christian minister in 1988. He currently serves as the 9th General Minister of the United Church of Christ, one of the USA's most progressive faiths, whose vision is "A Just World for All." He is a frequent speaker on the subject of white privilege, and is especially committed to engaging white audiences to come to deeper understandings of the privilege. He is particularly interested in how whites manifest privilege every day and how it impacts people of color, two things whites remain largely either ignorant of or in denial about. He has been devoted to his bride Mimi for over 36 years, and they have parented three children - a composer/musician, an author/painter, and a poet. John and Mimi have two grandchildren they dote on constantly. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Bill I love your writing and your views that embrace compassionate deeds rather than creedal concepts. It seems to me that your message would have a much broader appeal if you opened your invitation to follow your belief paradigm to all comers – not just Christians – and broadened your teaching authority to other sages and ethical and moral teachers beyond Jesus. I think your call and message could be far more inclusive than being restricted to Christians alone. Have you ever addressed a non-Christian audience and broadened your message to accept their way of worshipping God? A: By Bishop John Shelby Spong Dear Bill, Thank you for your letter and suggestion. Yes, I have addressed audiences of other faiths, especially in synagogues, but I have also conducted a dialogue with a rabbi and his congregation in Richmond, Virginia, with a Buddhist monk in China and with a trio of Hindu scholars in India. Every significant contact I have had with other faith traditions has deepened my appreciation for what they are and has broadened my understanding of my own faith. I do not believe that I contribute to the interfaith dialogue by seeking to master a faith tradition other than my own. While I certainly do not think that God is a Christian, I believe the ultimate pathway to religious unity comes through my willingness to go so deeply into Christianity that I escape its limits. Only then can I bring to the interfaith table the pearl of great price that I believe Christianity has to offer. I hope that all religious people of all traditions will be equally dedicated to discovering the essence of holiness that their faith tradition possesses so that they can share with me the essence, the pearl of great price that they have received from their life in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. My goal is to enrich the world with the essence of Christianity even as I am being enriched by the essence of other worship traditions. I hope I never disparage or look down on the way any person journeys into the mystery and wonder of God. I do not want to be against any religion. I want to walk beyond all religions, even my own, in my lifetime quest for the truth of God that all of us can only "see through a glass darkly." ~ Bishop John Shelby Spong November 7, 2007 Read and share online here | | | | | | | | 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! | | | | | | This week's donation request | | | | | | | | | | Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my people not been attended to? - Jeremiah 8:22 (The Inclusive Bible – Priests for Equality) The world is in need of a balm. The health of its people is not being attended to in a manner that it needs – in a manner that it deserves. Biblically, in a manner that is required. For far too long, we have hoped, wished and prayed for a physician to attend to our health. Biden will not be that physician. He may help in some ways but he cannot heal a nation, or the world, alone. No more so than any U.S. President or world leader can or has. Yet, we continue to seek a savior in spite of the fact that the one who many call “Savior” taught us that we are our savior. We must also admit that much like the cartoon character Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The majority of traditional Christianity has not only sat too idly by as the world has become more sick and more divided, but in many cases it has encouraged the behavior that leads to it. As progressive Christians, we have work to do. Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: indeed it's the only thing that ever has.” Each of us are a part of the balm the world needs. At Progressing Spirit and ProgressiveChristianty.org we provide a variety of resources, encouragement, and perspectives to help insure that we all are a “thoughtful” part of the “committed citizens” of which Margaret Mead spoke. Bringing these resources to you is surprisingly expensive, but we are committed to continue to not only provide them, but to continually improve upon them. To do so, we need your help. Would you consider making a donation to help us continue to provide these much needed resources in times such as these? Together we can be part of the balm that heals and changes the world. Progressing Spirit is part of ProgressiveChristianity.org, a 501(3)c Non-Profit. | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the New Testament, Part XVII: The Birth of Mark, the First Gospel Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong March 25, 2010 It is difficult to study the gospels accurately unless we step outside the Christian Church as we traditionally experience it today. That may sound like a strange statement, but increasingly I believe it is true. The gospels have been read in liturgical worship for two thousand years. They have provided the texts upon which sermons have been preached in churches under a variety of historical circumstances. Some of these churches were under persecution; some were so established that they participated in the persecution of others. Sermons preached on gospel texts have been heard in churches that lived through the breakup of the Middle Ages, in churches undergoing both the Protestant reformation and the Catholic counter reformation and in churches making their witness in the modern and even the post-modern world. So deeply has the message of these gospels been captured in liturgy, translated through hymns and enshrined in buildings that most of us cannot separate gospel content from cultural artifacts. This deep familiarity must be removed before the original power of the gospels can be recovered. Familiarity does bring both contempt and misunderstanding. What has sometimes been called “gospel truth” sometimes turns out not to be true at all. It is amazing, for example, how people use the Bible to justify their cultural prejudices, totally unaware of their own ignorance. These prejudices are then re-enforced by the assumption that their culturally blended knowledge is actually biblical. Of interest is the fact that most people learn the content of the Christmas story not from reading the Bible, but by watching Christmas pageants over the years. In these pageants, poetic or dramatic license is regularly practiced. People are therefore amazed to discover that only two of the gospels (Matthew and Luke) include birth stories and that these two contradict each other in many places. How many people know, for example, that in the texts of the Bible there are no camels in the story of the wise men, no donkey on which Mary rode to Bethlehem while she is “great with child,” no stable in which Christ was born and no animals that populated that non-existent stable? Moving deeper into the Christian story, there are no “seven last words” spoken by Jesus from the cross. Mark and Matthew record only one saying from the cross and that is what we call “the cry of dereliction:” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Luke omits that saying as far too human to be spoken by “the Son of God,” but then proceeds to add three of his own creation. John then omits all of these previously recorded sayings and creates three totally new ones never heard before. Finally, almost every detail of the Easter story in each of the four gospels is contradicted in the writings of another gospel. The most important thing to embrace, however, is that, in regard to the Bible, the ignorance is so profound that most people do not even know that they do not know. Part of what I am seeking to do in this series on the gospels is to penetrate this culturally imposed fog so that we today might hear the message of each of the four gospel writers in the way each was heard by the first listeners to their words. In order to accomplish this task we first need to dismiss many of the assumptions that we bring to our hearing of these gospel narratives. The first and most important of these is that the gospels are not biographies of Jesus. They are not eyewitness accounts of what Jesus actually did, nor are they tape recordings of the things that Jesus literally said. I shall never forget being on a late night talk show some years ago when on a media tour with the publication of my book, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism. My host that evening was Tom Snyder, who was operating out of a studio in Burbank, California. As the interview progressed, I suggested that the four gospels in the New Testament were generally dated no earlier than the year 70 CE and no later that the year 100. Tom, a lapsed Roman Catholic, bestirred himself and said, “Now, wait a minute, Bishop! I just got out my short pencil and began to do some figuring. If the gospels were written that late then none of them could have been written by eyewitnesses.” “That is correct, Tom,” I responded. “None of them claims to have been written by an eyewitness except the Fourth Gospel, but no reputable scholar today thinks that John Zebedee actually wrote this book.” John Zebedee was described in the book of Acts (4:13) as an “uneducated man,” while the gospel that bears John’s name is filled with long, complex theological discourses, which require enormous sophistication. Finally, this gospel was written in Greek, not in Aramaic, which was, so far as we know, the only language that John Zebedee could speak. Stunned, Tom Snyder said, “That is not what the nuns taught me in parochial school!” I enquired as to what they had taught him, and he replied “They said the disciples of Jesus followed him around, writing down everything he said and that this is how we got the gospels!” Amused at how unlearned a grown and rather worldly-wise man could nonetheless be, I asked, “Tom, did the nuns also tell you that the disciples used spiral bound notebooks and ballpoint pens?” At that moment, the dawn of a new realization swept across my host’s face. The facts are that all four of the gospels were written by the second generation and, in the case of the Fourth Gospel, maybe even by the third generation of Christians. The gospels were written in Greek, a language in which neither Jesus nor the disciples were fluent. They were also written with no punctuation and without even being divided into chapters, paragraphs, verses or sentences. In the style of that day they did not even include a space between words, just line after line of letters. At the end of a line on whatever they used for a page there would be no dash to warn the reader that a word was being broken and it would continue on the next line. There were no capital letters. All punctuation, all separation of words, all divisions into verses, paragraphs and chapters would be imposed on these texts hundreds of years later. How much of the Jesus story was known before each gospel was written is hard to determine, but the probability is that for most people the first time they heard a gospel being read was the first time they had heard most of the Jesus stories that they contain. Prior to the writing of the earliest gospel of Mark, all that the people knew about Jesus was whatever had been conveyed in vignettes through preaching and the oral tradition, and the high probability is that the setting for this hearing was in the synagogue at Sabbath day worship. This means that the same story might be used on different occasions with new details added or old details deleted, making our attempt to find historical accuracy in them simply not possible. When one multiplies this fact by a period of 40 to 70 years, the dimension of the problem we face in creating hard history begins to come into view. Perhaps the best we can do is to demonstrate when the various stories about Jesus entered the written tradition. In order to understand how the first gospel, Mark, was initially received, we need to embrace the fact that before Mark wrote, the written details about the crucifixion of Jesus were contained in one line in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “He died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” That is all Paul said, and thus that is all Christians had before the early 70’s. Mark thus introduced such narratives as the account of the last supper on the night before the crucifixion, the story of the Garden of Gethsemane, the account of Judas’ betrayal at midnight, the role of the Sanhedrin in determining Jesus’ guilt, the denial of Peter, the flight of the disciples, the trial before Pilate, the freeing of Barabbas, the torture with the crown of thorns and the story of the thieves crucified with him. None of these details were written prior to Mark. Of the burial of Jesus all that was known in writing before Mark was, again, what Paul had written: “He was buried.” That was it. Mark thus introduced the story of the tomb, the character of Joseph of Arimathea and the various details of his burial. In regard to the story of Easter all that the Christians had in writing before Mark was found, once again, in a brief Pauline narrative: “He rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” Paul goes on to relate that Jesus “appeared” to Cephas, the twelve, 500 brethren at once, James, the apostles and finally to Paul. No detail of any of these appearances, however, was given and even the word “appeared” is open to a variety of meanings. Paul counts himself as one of those to whom the risen Christ “appeared.” Since Paul’s conversion was some one to six years after the crucifixion, an appearance to Paul could hardly have been physical. Please notice that before Mark wrote in the early 70’s, there was also no account of an empty tomb, no angels, no visit of the women and no messenger to announce the resurrection. Mark added these details as the tradition unfolded. There were other things in the Jesus story that Mark appears to have introduced for the first time. Mark is the first person to tell us about the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist and the first person to associate the story of Jesus with miracles. The idea that Jesus was a teacher of note or that he taught in parables was still another Markan-introduced theme. When we embrace these things, we begin to understand something of how the Christian faith evolved and how dramatic an event it must have been to have the first gospel appear in the 8th decade of the Christian era. Next week we will begin to put the message of Mark’s gospel into the context of its first-century Jewish world. It looks quite different from the way we read it today, but even if it is a little-known story, I believe we will find it to be a beautiful one. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Walking Together Giving Thanks Through Music 34th Annual Inter-Spiritual Celebration of Gratitude Sunday, November 22nd @ 2:00 PM On Zoom Unique presentations will offer rich expressions of our diversity with chant, movement, music, spoken word, and song. May this gathering warm our hearts and instill hope for our future, “Walking Together in Gratitude”. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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11/12/2020, Progressing Spirit, Jennifer Wilson: Surrendering to the Will of Earth; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 12 Nov '20

12 Nov '20

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p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1930561347 #yiv1930561347templateBody .yiv1930561347mcnTextContent, #yiv1930561347 #yiv1930561347templateBody .yiv1930561347mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1930561347 #yiv1930561347templateFooter .yiv1930561347mcnTextContent, #yiv1930561347 #yiv1930561347templateFooter .yiv1930561347mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Surrendering to the Will of Earth | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Jennifer Wilson November 12, 2020 I didn’t know what surrender really meant until I went through labor with my first child. I had always considered myself excellent at surrendering, interpreting the word in a passive way. To surrender meant not speaking my mind. It meant keeping quiet to keep the peace, letting injustice happen to me and around me, without complaint, lulled as I was into a comfortable “c’est la vie” spiritual bypass approach to life. I had confused the concept of surrender with a murky blend of ideas like serenity, tranquility, humility, passivity and nonviolence. As I write this article, I am 39 weeks pregnant, two days away from my due date for my second son. The leaves are falling around me in the Appalachian Mountains and fires continue to burn near my childhood home in California. I cannot help but experience again the relationship between surrender, death, and birth, and the profound power of transformation that we see everywhere in the natural world. On the eve of Jesus’s arrest, on the precipice of his crucifixion he visited the Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples. Intuiting what was in store for him, he went into prayer while Peter, James and Paul stood watch. Jesus prayed for three hours and in an ultimate, and beautiful moment of human expression, was succumbed by fear. Speaking to God, he said “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me.” He meant the cup of suffering, pain and death. He pleads for a moment to be spared, his fear and doubt overcoming him. But then, I like to imagine, he looks at the garden around him, glowing under the moonlight. He takes in the abundance of life, the beauty of the spring blossoms, and he sinks into a deeper place of communion with that ever present cosmic, life-giving energy. Finally, he says “Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.” Real surrender is anything but passive. I had a home birth for my first child. As I approached my due date that first time, people often asked me if I was nervous. I told them that I was only excited. After all, I believed in myself - that I would stay grounded and present through any kind of pain. I had a strong meditation practice, I was physically fit, I had a practice of jumping in ice cold water, swimming in the blustery Pacific Ocean, participating in consciousness-altering ceremonies, running half-marathons, practicing hot yoga and the list went on. I was confident that I was physically and mentally prepared for anything. I wasn’t. The twenty-hour excruciating labor shattered me. There was a record heat wave that year, the first year of the catastrophic fires in California, and the headlines of the newspapers on my son’s day of birth read “San Francisco Reaches 115 Degrees on the Hottest Day in Recorded History.” In most of my memories of that day I can see myself lying on our bed, looking down from somewhere above, which tells me that my consciousness flitted and hovered outside of my body for part or most of it. I remember visualizing thousands of generations of women standing behind me, supporting me and sometimes jeering at my apparent weakness. I remember feeling my midwife’s fingers trying to guide the direction of my pushing. I pushed for three hours, I screamed, I vomited, I cried, I sweated, groaned, contorted my body and bled for three hours, thinking I was dying, and now I wonder if like Jesus in the garden, what I was actually doing was praying. I remember utter blackness all around me, my face pressed into an abyss of mud and squirming things, darkness and heat, an all-consuming, frightening Kali of a presence telling me that there was no running away or hiding, transcending or bypassing. For a long time, I thought that voice was an inner demon, gloating at me. Now, three years later, on the threshold of another labor, I understand that that voice, that dark presence, was actually the Earth, teaching me how to surrender. We are now, as a species, in the wildly terrifying threshold of the birth canal. The contractions have been building for countless generations, and we have not been able to see far beyond this fertile tunnel to the light just on the other side. The only true spiritual practice is the one that midwives this brutal transition, guiding our species into the new. I learned during my labor what I believe humanity needs to remember now: that in order to be a part of the birth of a new world, we must surrender, and even more importantly that surrender is a verb. It is not a passive state. The origins of the word surrender come from the French roots for “to give back,” and “over.” And that is exactly what surrender is. It is not laying down our arms, it is not choosing peace over justice, it is not breathing deeply and meditating our way out of our pain. True surrender speaks to our relationship with our common mother, the Earth. It means to give back to her, over and over again, above and beyond what we think we are capable of giving. This is also the lesson of the Fall, and the fires, and the breakdown of the world we are witnessing in a million ways every day from the pandemic that continues to spread like wildfire, to one of the most polarizing presidential elections to date, to the ever-present threat of a dying planet, crucified by its own children. I look now at the orange and yellow leaves on the trees outside my window and am reminded that when the time for rebirth comes, something changes in the very nature of things, seen and unseen. The leaves begin to lose their chlorophyll and turn from green to red, the fetus sends out a hormone to its mother’s uterus that initiates contractions, a microscopic atom is dispelled from a bat’s tongue and floats gently through the air, landing on a human lip, the tiniest spark of light is caught on a wind and expands through the air to become a massive fire. These changes can be beautiful like the rich autumn foliage of the season, painful like a contracting uterus, hot and fast like an uncontainable wildfire. Out of the compost of the fallen leaves will grow new saplings and mushrooms. Out of the birth canal will come a beautiful child telling a new story. Out of the ashes will emerge a new forest. Out of the surrendered body of a man, a new way of living and loving will spread. The trees, the laboring mother, the fire, the martyr, they give themselves back over to the Earth, and from them the Earth births something new. There are many ways one can interpret the significance of Jesus’s moment of doubt and fear, and his ultimate surrender to God, happening in the Garden of Gethsemane. One of the most profound to me is that in that garden olives were pressed into oil. To make oil from olives, the olives must be crushed under extreme pressure until a blood-red juice runs from their bodies. When this fluid hits the oxygen in the air an alchemical process occurs, and it transforms into the fresh light green color we associate with the most delicate olive oil. We use this oil to create food that nourishes our bodies, and to anoint other beings, honoring the sacred within them. The most beautiful irony is that immediately after Jesus surrendered to the will of the divine, “then appeared an angel unto him, strengthening him.” The giving of himself did not weaken him, but bolstered him, and as we know of the rest of the story, ultimately led to his metaphoric rebirth, and also to the birth of a new philosophy with new ways of being human. New opportunities sprang forth, opening the possibility for a civilization rooted in love. This is the type of surrender all mystic warriors are being called to experience at this transformational time on our planet. The kind that crushes us, that makes us bleed, that brings us to our threshold and dares us to step beyond. This is what true surrender looks like - when we give ourselves to the Earth so that these parts of ourselves can be made by her into the material of new creations. When friends have asked me during this pregnancy if I am nervous for the labor again, I tell them the truth. I am terrified. I want to beg anyone willing to listen “please take this cup away from me.” I am terrified because I know that I will meet the edge of my abyss again. I know that my ego will be shattered, again. I know that I will experience pain unlike anything I can describe with words, and I know that the only way through the process is to, well, go through it, giving myself away to the cosmos, letting myself, as my husband loves to say, be eaten by the Gods. To become something more. This is what I have learned about surrender: we must be willing to turn back to the Earth and scream from the depths of our bellies “Dear mother, not our wills, but yours be done,” and then to prepare the way for what will be born. ~ Jennifer Wilson Read online here About the Author Jennifer Wilson is the co-author of Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action and works in book publishing as a private consultant for authors assisting with manuscript editing and book publicity. She is also the co-director of Wild Awakenings, an adult Rites of Passage organization dedicated to fostering the thriving of Earth, life, and humanity. Jennifer was on the Board of Trustees at the Unity in Marin Spiritual Community for three years, serving as the Board President for 18 months. Also at Unity in Marin, Jennifer was a guest speaker for Sunday mornings, she led Rites of Passage groups for teenagers, and founded a young adult interfaith group committed to conscious connection, community service, and social activism. She is a passionate hiker, reader, writer, and public speaker. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Jackson “I stopped going to church because it just seems to be the same thing all the time. Same sermons, same actions, same results. I'm not sure we were actually changing anything. We helped the poor, but they always came back still needing help. Why don't churches do more to change things?” A: By Rev. Mark Sandlin Dear Jackson, Unfortunately, most spiritual communities have become much better and much more comfortable at giving people a hand out than giving them a hand up. Put simply, we prefer the self-serving feelings of charity to the self-sacrificing realities of justice. We feed a person for a day, we turn their power back on for now, we give them shelter for a night, and that’s a good thing, but we fall miserably short of challenging and changing the systems that will have those same people starving in a week, sitting in the dark next month, sleeping in the streets all too soon. Charity does help those in need, but only temporarily. Who it helps the most is those of us who have a need to help, who feel it is our calling to aid those in need. Charity lets us feel like we are doing something to respond to need in a world that is overwhelmed with people in need. There’s really no risk in it and people are usually very supportive of such efforts. Justice, on the other hand, is hard. It frequently requires a great deal of sacrifice and you probably aren’t going to get a lot of people cheering you along the way – probably quite the opposite. So, most spiritual communities simply don’t do it. Justice looks like activism and spiritual communities tend to shy away from that. Justice requires you to not make nice with abusive systems; it requires you to rock the boat a bit and to take a stand on issues that are frequently political hot buttons. For too many churches, that sounds very… well, un-Church like. Too many of us think being Church means being liked and all that standing up for something means standing against something and we just don’t like the thought of people not liking us because of it. But here's the thing, Jesus not only confronted systems of injustice, but he tried to teach us to do the same. He did it standing in the tradition of great prophets of Judaism who never failed to stand up against abuse of power. They risked everything. They frequently were run out of town or put to death for it. Maybe that’s what we’re afraid of – the proverbial crosses we’d have to bear. I'm not sure. The thing I am sure of is that charity is love for the moment and justice is love extended into the future. Or as Dr. King once said, “Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.” Don't get me wrong, we must not stop doing the necessary and much needed work of charity, but we also must not stop there. We must push on, risking ourselves, risking ridicule, risking our places of privilege, and reclaim the biblical and prophetic voice of justice. We must stand in the footsteps of the likes of Dr. King, Dorothea Day and Gandhi for without justice, charity falls short. Because, you see, charity and justice? They are a matched set. It is time to let justice roll. ~ Rev. Mark Sandlin Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The Associated Church Press’ Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been published on “The Huffington Post,” “Sojourners,” “Time,” “Church World Services,” and even the “Richard Dawkins Foundation.” He’s been featured on PBS’s “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” and NPR’s “The Story with Dick Gordon.” Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | This week's donation request | | | | | | | | | | Belief systems may vary from religion to religion, person to person, and still most everyone agrees with Rob Bell's words. We are all in this together. ProgressiveChristianity.org is a member driven non-profit organization dedicated to bringing you the best theological and timely information from world-class thinkers and theologians. We offer different perspectives and understanding while helping churches and individuals navigate the passages of our lives. If you have enjoyed our "free" resources and authors please take a moment to donate today so we can continue our work - we need you! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the New Testament, Part XVI: The Elder Paul — Philemon and Philippians Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong February 25, 2010 The process of aging works wonders on the human spirit. Battles once so emotional that they seemed to pit life against death lose their rancor in time, and the differences that once divided people so deeply lose their potency. Age brings both mellowing and perspective. That was surely true of Paul. In this series I have tried to read Paul chronologically — that is, in the order of his writings. It is an inexact science, but I am comfortable with the order we have adopted. In that way we can see the changes taking place before our eyes. In I Thessalonians, written about the year 51 and thus Paul’s first epistle, he was concerned about the fact that the second coming of Christ had not yet arrived. Why, they wondered, had Jesus not returned by now to inaugurate the desired kingdom of God on earth? Paul tries anxiously to explain the delay. In Galatians, his second epistle, we see the white hot anger that separated Paul from those he called “the Judaizers,” who are symbolized in Galatians by James, the Lord’s brother, and by Peter, both of whom were demanding that all converts keep the Torah and only be allowed to come into Christianity by way of Judaism. Paul, deeply touched by what he came to call “grace,” would never submit to this legalistic point of view from which he had fled, namely that salvation came through one’s deeds, one’s obedience to the Torah. The Paul of the middle years of his career was thoughtful, systematic and good at problem solving. In this phase of his life, he penned his letters to the Corinthians and his masterpiece, his epistle to the Romans. In the Corinthian letters, he was majestic in spelling out the meaning of love: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” and also in that epistle he wrote the fullest understanding of Jesus’ resurrection that we possess. In Romans he comes as close as he ever would to systematizing the meaning of Christ in beautiful words that ring across the ages like “Nothing can separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.” The years rolled on for Paul, however, as they do for all of us and he grew mellow. He was no longer convinced that Jesus would come again in his lifetime, so he settled into long range plans and even began to contemplate his own death. In this phase of his life, which is true for most of us, he lived more in the “now” and less in the future and so relationships grew in importance for him. It was at this stage of his life that he wrote the two epistles that we consider today, Philemon and Philippians, both of which reflect the more contemplative Paul. With the completion of our consideration of Philemon and Philippians, we will have probed the seven epistles about which there is no debate as to their being the authentic work of Paul. Next we will look at those epistles that have much Pauline substance, but increasingly scholars suggest they are “pseudo-Paul,” that is,written in Paul’s name but not by Paul himself. They are II Thessalonians, Colossians, and Ephesians. There are other epistles that bear the name of Paul, namely I and II Timothy and Titus, that are in a third category. Universally they are regarded as not authentic and they are actually dated later than some of the gospels, so we will look at them later. If we are trying to study the New Testament in the time sequence in which its various books are written, we will have to place Mark and perhaps Matthew ahead of these “Pastoral Epistles.” For now, however, we focus on Philemon and Philippians, the epistles of the elder Paul. Both are written, according to majority opinion but certainly not the unanimous opinion of the reputable scholars, while he was imprisoned in Rome only a couple of years before his martyrdom. Philemon is fascinating in that one wonders why it was preserved at all, and why it was placed in the collection of Paul’s letters that circulated among the churches before the first gospel was written. It is so different in essential ways from every other epistle. Philemon is a personal letter of his, less than one page in length. It is addressed to an individual, not to the church community. It has to do with a request made by Paul to have a runaway slave named Onesimus, who has become Paul’s valued companion and primary caregiver, be set free so he can once again be in Paul’s service. Paul makes this request even as Onesimus is being returned to his master because, in the culture of that day, it was the right thing to do. Paul hopes that by obeying the law, his request to allow Onesimus to come back to him will be granted. Paul tells his friend Philemon, to whom he writes this letter, of Onesimus’ conversion and of his indispensable faithfulness in Paul’s service. Paul wants Onesimus pardoned so that he can freely come back to be Paul’s assistant. It is hardly the kind of letter that would rank inclusion in a group of epistles written to various churches that also included the carefully reasoned argument of the Epistle to the Romans. Yet here it is. John Knox, a top-tier 20th century Pauline scholar, offers a fascinating explanation as to why it was included. Basing his argument on an epistle written by one of the church “fathers,” Ignatius, in the early years of the second century that indicates that a man named Onesimus had become the Bishop of Ephesus after Paul’s death, Knox suggests that this was the same Onesimus about whom Paul was concerned in the Epistle to Philemon. The reason it might have been added to this collection of Paul’s letters, says Knox, is that it contained significant material that was important to the church in Ephesus, which scholars now believe was to have been the destination of this first collection of Paul’s epistles. It is an interesting speculation and worthy of being passed on, so long as it is clear that it is a speculation. There seems to be no other plausible argument as to why this private and very short letter became treasured church property. When we move on to Philippians, we come to the most affectionate letter Paul ever wrote and also to the picture of a Paul who knows that his life is nearing its end. The Philippian congregation clearly cares for Paul emotionally and Paul clearly cares for them. He writes them as “saints” for whom he gives thanks “upon every remembrance” of them. Philippi was the first city in Europe that Paul had visited and where his first European church had been planted. The Philippians had sent him gifts in prison and they were clearly worried about both his safety and his personal well being. Paul’s agenda in this letter is to thank them and comfort them about his situation. He fears he may never see them again. He promises to send Timothy to assure them of his well being. He fills the epistle with words of joy, hope and consolation. He no longer expects the return of Christ in his lifetime and so he wrestles with his own death, which he assumes to be imminent. He wonders out loud whether it is better to depart this life to be with Christ or to persevere for the sake of his churches. He suggests that when one stands at last in the presence of Christ, this earthly life will be seen as being of no great value. “To live is Christ, to die is gain” is his conclusion. There is a deep-seated contentment in Paul that finds expression in this epistle. “I have learned,” he says, “to be content in whatever state I find myself.” I can do all things, he assures his readers, through Christ who strengthens me. In his conclusion, he does not go into a long ethical treatise as he does in so many of his earlier epistles, where he moves from spelling out his understanding of Christ to drawing from that the implications for those who seek to live out the Christ life. In Philippians, his ethical teaching is one verse (4:8) “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” The most memorable passage in Philippians and one of the most mysterious and oft-quoted of all Paul’s work is found in 2:5-11. It is called the “self-emptying” passage. My sense is that in these words there is a powerful affirmation that for Paul, all that we mean by God has been experienced in Christ, but when these words were translated into English, they reflected the ancient battles in which the church sought to determine how it was that Jesus could have been both human and divine. I do not think that the Jewish Paul ever thought in those categories. The way it is read today is that Christ did not grasp after the divinity that was his, but rather emptied himself, taking the form of a servant and he was, therefore, exalted by God to the status for which he was qualified. So Paul then draws his conclusion by stating that “At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow.” Many scholars believe that Paul is quoting in these “self-emptying” verses an early Christian hymn. That may be so but I believe it also reflects Paul’s vision of Jesus as “The New Adam.” The first Adam did grasp after the dignity of God. The serpent’s temptation in the Garden of Eden story was that if Adam would but eat the forbidden fruit, “you will be like God.” The people in the Philippi church had tensions in their lives over how to worship, what to believe and how to act. Each side in each debate claimed superiority. Paul urges them to let the mind of Christ be their mind. Then he explained that Christ did not grasp after a superior status but emptied himself. It was in the fullness of his humanity that he found the freedom to give his life to others and that was how God was seen in him. The ultimate purpose of human life is to love the face of hatred, to forgive the face of pain, to live in the face of death. In doing those things one must be free of the need of self exaltation. That is what it means to reveal the divine in the human. It was this concept that convinced Paul that the God presence has been experienced in Jesus. The pathway into divinity is through humanity. The pathway into eternity is through time. This is the closing theme in what we now believe was the final authentic letter of the Apostle Paul. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Planning Christmas Gifts for your Children & Grandchildren? Our children's curriculum is the perfect answer! A Joyful Path is truly progressive curriculum that is nature centered, joy-full, compassionate, and intelligent. 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