September 2019 - OE - lists.wedgeblade.net

Joe Mathews Dissertation on John Wesley
by Wendell Refior 21 Apr '20

21 Apr '20

Colleagues - We now have a digital copy of JWM's Dissertation on Wesley. A Study of John Wesley, turned in and rejected by Niebuhr and never rewritten or approved. Wendell Refior for the ICA Global Archives Chapter 1: The Human Constitution https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets/21219.pdf Chapter 2: The Life of Love https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets/21220.pdf Chapter 3: The Knowledge of Faith https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets/21221.pdf Conclusion: Concluding Remarks https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets/21222.pdf -- Thanks until later. "To believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for <everyone> -- that is genius." - Emerson in "Self-Reliance" Wendell

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Completed life of Judith Tippett
by Lynda C 07 Nov '19

07 Nov '19

Dear Mike, Meg, Brook, Kit and family, Fifty nine years of journeys together as a family is remarkable. We hold you all in our care as you begin a new chapter with Judith’s presence with you in new ways. You, as the keeper of the memorials of our corporate body, now add your very own spouse to the list of the of those who died on the march. A sacred list! With care and sympathy, Lynda and John

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Re: [Oe List ...] RS-1 Friday night conversation etc.
by Dawn Collins 26 Sep '19

26 Sep '19

Hi, Karen! Hoping to follow up today with you and our community regarding the placement of my pamphlet under RS1 in the Global Archives. To the OE Community: If you are considering making use of a weekend spirit enablement experience then, download the entire 2 part booklet On Becoming a Practical Theologian with 5 Part Questions addendum for facilitators. The pamphlet only is now available from the Global Archives by your participants. Any questions? Kindfully yours, dawn303 388 1454 We love the Creator/Source/Spirit because the Spirit/Creator/Source loved us first.- 1 John 4:19 On Sunday, September 8, 2019, 04:44:31 PM MDT, Karen Snyder <karen.snyder10(a)gmail.com> wrote: Dawn Please email me the digitized OBAPT and I will see that it is added to the Archives Website under RSI! Peace, Karen Snyder Troxel Begin forwarded message: From: Dawn Collins via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] RS-1 Friday night conversation etc. Date: September 8, 2019 at 4:20:13 PM CDT To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: Dawn Collins <collinsdawn747(a)yahoo.com> Reply-To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> I remember the tight, small room in our RS1 course in '69 at 3444 on the West Side of Chicago with accommodations being made for smokers. And Joe Pierce making wonderful grounding illustrations in his lectures and on the chalkboard. My mind was being blown by the depth penetration of each section compared to the rap sessions around the edges experienced in my previous community college days. Nothing memorable remained from those head trips that added up to one fleeting moment of surface intellectualism. So my cover was blown as a pseudo-intellectual as we progressed through the weekend. Everything was so new and expansive and deep as I tried to hang onto my two-story consciousness. Well, I experienced not just a wrenching of its vestiges but a blinding headache (and I was not prone to migraines) as that two-story universe literally crashed within my brain. Yet the seed was planted and I wanted MORE of this brand new way of walking and talking with purpose and meaning that appealed to the student/teacher nature in me. And so I succumbed to reaching for the high notes in my life song and responded to the Call to join those who had evoked a like-minded spirit in me to traverse the journey--then of becoming a part of EI/ICA and now the collegial band of the ICA where I have had a lesser experience in dispensing its tools and methods yet I keep up with the news and publications of progressives and colleagues (including JWM's contributions to the movement embracing This World/Other World, the NSV/NRM, and community development/social and ecological justice). I wrote a pamphlet five years ago, On Becoming a Practical Theologian (OBAPT) along with an Addendum with 5 Questions which adapted the RS1 construct as a springboard for a weekend of interior examination and sharing the care of the self. Should you desire to enhance the development of an individual's faith stance in a group setting, I offer this booklet digitized in the Global Archives in Chicago for your perusal. Yours in kindfulness, dawn We love the Creator/Source/Spirit because the Spirit/Source/Creator first loved us. - 1 John 4:19 On Saturday, September 7, 2019, 04:16:07 AM MDT, Randy Williams via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Jack, Your story of Bob and David in the bar, and their garb, reminds me that in imaginable education everything is pedagogical, and that a lot of the image shift takes place outside the formal structures. My first RS-1 was in Houston in 1960 something. Joe Pierce was the first teacher, and his very presence was an assault on many of my old images. The course was life changing as billed. But one of the things I remember was a conversation with Joe around the edges. He kept talking about these new things EI was starting called religious houses, so I asked, what is a religious house. He said it was a “sort of hang-out for revolutionaries.” For all time that changed my image of what it meant to be “religious,” and then “the religious.” I know there are thousands of stories like this we could all tell. Maybe we should, and maybe they should have a place in the Archives. Randy On Sep 6, 2019, at 10:38 PM, Jack Gilles <jackcgilles(a)gmail.com> wrote: Randy, So many of our courses did the image shift, at least for me. I remember taking CS-I on the near west side (NW Side) of Cleveland. R. Fishel and D. Scott came and did it. I remember greeting them at a bar in their motorcycle boots and black berets with wedgeblade pins! I never expected clergy to be dressed like that! But in was in the section on the Urban Revolution that they had us just walk the neighborhood. I saw things, heard things and felt things I had never noticed before. It was a magical experience, and we had two pastors who became part of the first galaxy in churches there, Jack & Jane Sherlough (sp?) and Jerry & Marty Lapka. Later the very large body of folks who made up the Cleveland Metro Cadres wrote a song to This Land is Your Land about the Cleveland Metro. A fire was lit that has never dimmed in so many of us. I’ll let Jim give his responses to RS-I, but wanted to share my image shifting experience. Jack On Sep 6, 2019, at 10:39, Randy Williams via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Jim,I think you’re probably correct. What would you say were some of the more important image shifts that occurred in RS-1?Randy On Sep 6, 2019, at 10:38 AM, James Wiegel via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: I don’t remember the part about arguing with the participants during the Friday dinner conversation. I got thinking about this because the Archive group was recently reviewing the Imaginal Education collection in the archive website and it occurred to me that I think the RS-1 course was the best and most refined example of imaginal education that we ever came up with . . . Here is a link to some additional remembrances of RS-1.https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUk2c_1SJ0s82ALQvVkg5VLcDiUxrEm… With Respect,Jim Wiegel On Sep 6, 2019, at 6:52 AM, Margaret Aiseayew via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: I remember telling the group at my first RS-1 that what grounded me in history was that I was an Iowa farm girl. Whoever was leading tried to argue with me and I argued that they knew nothing about electricity. (My farmer father had spent evenings wiring houses and as kids my brother and I often went with him.) My grounding in history has never changed, even as much as most of my other thinking did in response to that event. From: OE [mailto:oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Jann McGuire via OE Sent: Thursday, September 5, 2019 6:11 PM To: Order Ecumenical Community Cc: Jann McGuire Subject: [Oe List ...] RS-1 Friday night conversation Jim, I'm neurotic enough to still have my RS-1 file folders. The Friday evening conversation was 1) full name and one thing that grounds in history (I remember not understanding exactly what that meant.) 2) First name and book. 3) First name and movie. 4 ) First name and one pressing concern. _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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9/26, Progressing Spirit, Oppelt: Jesus: A Mutation of Consciousness - Part 2; Spong revisited: Evolution and Homosexuality: Twin Errors of the Christian Church
by Ellie Stock 26 Sep '19

26 Sep '19

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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv0093154852 #yiv0093154852templateBody .yiv0093154852mcnTextContent, #yiv0093154852 #yiv0093154852templateBody .yiv0093154852mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv0093154852 #yiv0093154852templateFooter .yiv0093154852mcnTextContent, #yiv0093154852 #yiv0093154852templateFooter .yiv0093154852mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } If we take the Godhead out of Jesus, what are we left with? | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Jesus: A Mutation of Consciousness - Part 2 | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Joran Slane Oppelt September 26, 2019 Click here to read Part 1. For most Christians, the question is, “Can you strip Jesus of his supernatural powers and still achieve salvation through Christ?” If we take the Godhead out of Jesus, what are we left with? Is there some other element that we enter into or move through by knowing him? Other than the transfinite mashup or disruption of spacetime that he represents, is there something else that we encounter or achieve by dedicating our lives to “The Way?” This is one of the redeeming qualities of religion, the power of faith or belief, and the impact that a community of practice can have on the individual. It obligates the singular to the plural and puts the responsibility on the individual, not only for their own destiny but for one another – socially and politically. It puts the onus on us. Religion may give us an identity and a box to check, but spiritual community (and real accountability) asks that we play out the actual ideas by which we live. It means that we will resist and rebel against ideas that don’t fit our worldview – a worldview that is constantly dynamic and changing. And, ideally, we will transcend those ideas and give birth to new ways of idea generation. We become responsible for Creation – ecologically. As we evolve, God evolves with us – biologically and cosmologically. As we know a greater Love, we love greater – ethically and psychologically. Humanism and panentheism are just the beginning of a religious innovation and spiritual evolution that represent the visible (and invisible) multiplicity of form and faith that we experience today. THE RESURRECTION “The Resurrection,” wrote Patriarch Athenagoras, “is not the resuscitation of a body; it is the beginning of the transfiguration of the world.” Jesus’s death and resurrection (like Krishna and Osiris before him) is one of the most argued ideas in Christianity. With no evidence or eyewitness accounts of this miracle, it is tempting to find scientific explanations for Jesus’s anastasis. Regardless of its historicity, by attempting to explain away his resurrection on a physical level, we rob the event of its meaning and its impact. Mythically, we rob Jesus of his ability to “overcome the world.” The primacy of the resurrection and the days that follow are pivotal in this story. Jesus “lived on” in the hearts and visions of those who knew him. That is where we must still look for him today. Metaphysically, we rob ourselves of the ability to achieve salvation through Christ. This momentous healing (actualization, forgiveness) can happen once-in-a-lifetime or it can happen daily. We must be able to surrender ourselves and give over all of our pain and suffering and “sin” to Jesus in his ninth and final hour. We must commit ourselves to entering the dark night of the soul – the via negativa – with Jesus at his crucifixion. Because on the other side of that is the via creativa. On the other side of that is something new in ourselves, something resurrected and reborn. Finally, we rob the women who witnessed the resurrection of their stories. Why were these women the first to see (and hear) Jesus after his death? Why were they chosen? What did they have in common? What is the feminine experience of this witnessing and this resurrection? There is a social and spiritual significance to the shared vision of these women who were the first to enter into the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God. And there’s been enough silencing and robbing of women of their stories throughout history. If Jesus is a mutation – a leap in consciousness, politics and humanity – then how is that mutation being expressed today? Where are Jesus’s ideas alive? Where is his movement (liberation, radical love, direct connection to the divine) growing and flourishing? THE FUTURE As some churches move away from Jesus’s original teaching, and others move ever-Christward, the spiritual direction (and value) of Christianity will always be in question. We do know that it sprang from a Jewish community in the Middle East at a time when people needed to hear this “good news.” Is this not the same evolutionary leap we see in the emergence of Buddhism from the hierarchical and caste system of Hinduism in its own age and ZIP Code (i.e. awakening to attachment and liberation from suffering)? Postmodernism has given us ideas like the “Cosmic Christ” or “Universal Christ” that equate the spirit of Jesus to a sense of everywhereness, akin to the Buddhist dharmakaya (ground of being) and the teachings of the Christian Mystics (Aquinas, Eckhart, Hildegard). Perhaps this is to lay the spiritual groundwork for the next unfolding of the fractal in physical space. The evolution of technology, after all, points to a world filled with cybernetic organisms – half-man, half-machine – perpetually plugged into an “internet of things.” If the future of spirit is everywhere (including this matrix) and Christ is universal, then we will need programs to run on this new spiritual operating system. We will need stories of “superhuman” ability, liberation and transcendence. We will need new moral and ethical systems that include the most truth. We will need both history and mythology. One is a timeline of facts, agreed upon by scholars and academics. The other is a living library of rich mental archetypes that hold the power to transform simply by us being near them and hearing their story. We need the square, rigid, steel and concrete forms of institutions (these are how we scale) and we also need the green, mossy stone circles of a self-directed spiritual practice (this is how we transform). Matter and spirit arise together, co-evolving as both psychic objects and responses to the current reality. The “liminal” spaces (spaces between worlds) of the 19th century were Earth-based (looking down and in). The dark green hedgerow was where children were warned not to venture. They could fall down a hole into some other realm or be abducted by fairies. The veil between those worlds was thinner at certain times of day (and certain times of the year). The liminal space of the 20th century, as Carl Jung wrote, was extraterrestrial (looking up and out). What we feared was the darkened sky, the vast and unknown inhabited by strange technology (unidentified, flying silver objects). We feared the backroads and bedrooms where adults might be stolen away by those objects. We feared what this new, alien technology might do to our bodies. These spaces (what we believe, fear, or are fascinated by as a collective) are a response to our changing world and a hall of mirrors of our own design. The alien technology is here. We use it and wear it every day and it is, indeed, affecting our bodies and minds. Social media has introduced a new fear for the 21st century – the stranger and the “other” (the individual and the community). As our world becomes more diverse, connected and immediate, we are experiencing a rise in political extremism, nationalism and hate-based violence. As we move toward a global society, more people are willing to lay down their lives to preserve borders and boundaries, as well as their own customs and traditions. They are moved and motivated by fear – the first rung on Maslow’s hierarchy. The first step to peace is by claiming victory over this fear. We must go willingly into that hedgerow or night sky, entering into the void of grief and suffering, knowing that after we are submerged, we will be resurrected. We must march into jihad (our internal struggle) knowing that there is a future version of ourselves struggling to be born. We must allow the virus of the mind to wreak havoc on the collective unconscious. A new multiplicity of forms (and faith) is straining inside the cocoon, waiting to unfold. The question is not, “How might I identify as a Christian or an Atheist or a Buddhist?” The question becomes, “How might I live and embody The Way – whether it’s through the Kingdom of God movement, the eight limbs of yoga, The Four Agreements, the Four-Fold Path, non-violent communication, the Tao, the Torah or psychedelics?” Are you walking confidently into joy, reverently toward mystery, mindfully with creation and faithfully following justice? What is the one transcendental idea that you are contributing to the future mutation of consciousness? What is the new idea that you will birth and bear and invite us to live inside of together? ~ Joran Slane Oppelt Read online here About the Author Joran Slane Oppelt is an international speaker, author, interfaith minister and award-winning producer and singer/songwriter. He is the owner and founder of the Metta Center of St. Petersburg and Integral Church – an interfaith and interspiritual organization in Tampa Bay. Joran is the author of Integral Church: A Handbook for New Spiritual Communities, Sentences, The Mountain and the Snow and co-author of Order of the Sacred Earth (with Matthew Fox) and Transform Your Life: Expert Advice, Practical Tools, and Personal Stories. He currently serves on the board of Creation Spirituality Communities and has spoken around the world about spirituality and the innovation of religion. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Brian This is about prayer. As a Buddhist (40 years), I would practice an oral meditation every morning and evening. It was, as one writer mentioned, a kind of physical workout – using the voice while sitting bolt upright facing a mandala. Although I’m now trying to be a Christian, I would like to be able to do something to bring myself closer to our Lord, other than sitting still while trying to keep invasive thoughts from disturbing my prayer session. What could you suggest? I’m a case requiring a lot of work (a long story) – if you understand what I mean. I just want to have God’s mercy and feel him with me in my struggle to express that mercy in all what I do. A: By Jennifer Berit & Skylar Wilson Dear Brian,Thank you for your question. I'd like to respond to your question about prayer, but first I want to address something else you said that caught my attention. You said that you have been a Buddhist for 40 years and now you are "trying" to be a Christian. What I'm most interested in is your use of the article "a" here. Being "a" Christian seems like such a final, permanent and immovable thing to be. I am afraid it means you are putting yourself, or trying to, into a box - the box of what it means to be "a Christian" and therefore you could be limiting all of the other many ways that Spirit could be wanting to express through you. Perhaps this is what is happening with your prayer practice, and why you are finding it difficult? I don't believe that being Christian, or being Buddhist, or praying needs to be any one thing, or looks a certain way. Mary Oliver says "I don't know exactly what a prayer is. But I do know how to pay attention." If sitting silently, letting your thoughts get the best of you doesn't feel like praying, then maybe for you it is not. Maybe for you praying is chanting, or singing? Maybe it is walking through the woods and noticing the way the light hits the treetops, or paying attention to the ant crawling across your toe. Maybe sometimes praying is simply tuning into your heart and feeling the simple desire to connect with the Great Mystery? Maybe that desire is God speaking to you, telling you "I am here." I wonder if accepting yourself and your own spiritual process is God's mercy acting through you? You say you require a lot of work - I believe you are doing the best kind of work, continuing to quest for a deeper connection with your unique sense of the Divine. ~ Jennifer Berit and Skylar Wilson Read and share online here About the Authors Jennifer Berit 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. Skylar Wilson, MA is the founder of Wild Awakenings, a conscious community of change-makers dedicated to the thriving of Earth, life, and humanity. He has led wilderness rites of passage journeys as well as ecological restoration teams for 18 years, specializing in creating sacred wilderness immersion experiences and interfaith ceremonies. Skylar is the cofounder and co-director of the Order of the Sacred Earth, a network of mystic warriors and activists dedicated to being the best lovers and defenders of the Earth that we can be. Skylar is the coauthor of the book by the same title as well as the co-host, with Jennifer Berit, of the podcast: "Our Sacred Earth" on Unity online radio. Skylar works closely with schools and organizations including the Stepping Stones Project in Berkeley, CA over the last 8 years while guiding organization-wide retreats, mentoring youth, group leaders, parents and elders. He also produces transformational events for thousands of people around the country including the Cosmic Mass, an intercultural healing ritual that builds community through dancing and the arts. He lives in Sebastopol, CA with his wife, son, two affectionate cats and a white wolf named Luna. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community! | | | | | | Join our FB community today! Spread the word, share with friends. Thanks! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Evolution and Homosexuality: The Twin Terrors of the Christian Church Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong Mary 28, 2008 Where is it that Christian people today focus their anger? One has only to look at the content of current ecclesiastical debates, listen to the rhetoric of church leaders or examine the issues upon which the church divides into two competing camps to have your answer. The two things that elicit the most fear, that bring the deepest threat to Christian people, are evolution and homosexuality. First, look at the data regarding evolution. The ink was not dry on Charles Darwin’s book The Origin of the Species before the Christian Church mounted a counterattack. It came in the person of Samuel Wilberforce, the Anglican Bishop of Oxford, who challenged a Darwin spokesperson, Thomas Huxley, to a debate, held at the Oxford Museum of Natural History. The record of that debate, however, reveals that Wilberforce engaged in the tactics of ridicule. Unable to deal with the message, he attacked the messenger. From that day to this the English speaking world has been increasingly aware of Darwin, while Wilberforce has long been forgotten. That is what happens to losers. Between 1910 and 1915 Darwin’s thought began to trickle down to Middle America, giving birth to a new attack. This time it was evangelicals associated with Princeton Theological Seminary, who felt compelled to counter evolution in the name of “true” religion. They began a world wide assault on Darwin by publishing weekly tracts that went to hundreds of thousands of religious leaders across the world making their case for biblical literalism and its anti-Darwinian bias. Two things were noteworthy about this early 20th century effort. First, these evangelicals called their tracts “The Fundamentals,” thus giving that word its birth as the name of literalistic Christianity. Second, this effort was funded by a massive grant from the Universal Oil Company of California, or Unocal. It would not be the last time in American history when oil money would unite with right wing religion to achieve a political agenda. Next came the Scopes Trial in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, that pitted Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan, riveting the nation’s attention to a battle described as pitting Satan and evolution against God and the Bible. John Scopes was found guilty of teaching something “contrary to the revealed word of God in Scripture” in the public schools of Tennessee. He was fined $100, a fine that was never paid. The primary effect of this trial was to cause evolution to be discussed around American dinner tables across the land. Then came the evangelical effort to get “Creation Science,” later repackaged and perfumed as “Intelligent Design,” taught by command of State Legislatures as an alternative to what they called the “Theory” of Evolution. Massive money was poured into this effort, but it also failed when these state laws were struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on which seven of the nine sitting judges were the appointees of conservative Republican presidents. There can be no doubt that Christian leaders felt and feel threatened by Darwinism. The second threat felt in the church today is over homosexuality. In every church throughout the nation a debate rages that is so intense that churches are literally splitting apart. International Anglican leaders have sacrificed their moral competence and their credibility by suggesting that “church unity” is more important than confronting ignorance and prejudice. The Vatican consistently issues statements calling homosexuals “deviant” and refusing to support ordinances at every political level requiring homosexuals to be treated equally in areas of employment and benefits. Roman Catholic rhetoric has attempted to defend that church against child abuse by blaming it on “a few homosexual priests,” as if pedophilia were the same as homosexuality. Benedict XVI’s first act as pontiff was to announce a purge of homosexuals from the priesthood. After the priestly abuse scandal faded a bit from the news, this order was modified to keep “aggressive homosexuals” from “entering” the priesthood, a tacit admission that if homosexual clergy were to be removed from the church, the number of priests, bishops and cardinals, already in short supply, would be diminished to unsustainable levels. Evolution and homosexuality are clearly the twin terrors that grip Christian emotions negatively today. I believe these two fears are more deeply related than most imagine. Darwin’s threat to Christianity went far beyond the perceived assault on the accuracy of the seven day creation story, which was the focus of the first Christian attack. The real threat lay elsewhere. Darwin had challenged the fundamental Christian understanding of both human life and salvation in so profound a way that he could not be ignored. If Darwin was correct, Christianity was wrong. Christianity talked of a God who had created a perfect and finished world. Darwin spoke of an ongoing creative process, continuous evolution, and a universe still expanding. Christianity defined human life as “just a little lower than the angels.” Darwin saw human life as arising out of a four plus billion year process involving a tooth and claw struggle until we achieved the status of being defined as “just a little higher than the apes.” Christianity said human life began in perfection, but soon fell into sin by disobeying God’s command, which resulted in our alienation from God. This loss of perfection was called “Original Sin,” from which we were told that we could never extricate ourselves. Only an invasive act on the part of a supernatural deity could rescue us from our brokenness. Jesus was that divine rescuer. He was referred to as the savior of the sinful, the redeemer of the lost, and the rescuer of the helpless. Darwin’s thought countered this idea. Life for Darwin had never been perfect so it could not have fallen, which of course means that it also could not be restored to a status it had never possessed. Original sin was thus out, the depravity of human life was out and the necessity for divine rescue was out. Human evil did not emerge from the fall, said Darwin, it was a product of our evolutionary history, an expression of the fact that we are still struggling to achieve full humanity. God’s act in Jesus could not be for the purpose of rescuing the fallen. Thus Darwin challenged the basis on which the Christian religion was understood and proclaimed. Only by convincing human beings of their fallen, sinful states could the church’s message of divine rescue be possible. In the theology, liturgies and hymns of the church the sense of sin and depravity was drilled into the human consciousness. No Christian was allowed to escape the chronic sense of unworthiness. Throughout history the Church has trafficked in guilt, the gift, we note, “that keeps on giving.” Christian theology begins not with the love of God, but with human sin and its fall. When we sing of God’s amazing grace, we discover it is amazing only because it saves a “wretch” like you and me. Our liturgies pronounce us “miserable offenders,” people in whom there is “no health” or wholeness, those not worthy to gather up the crumbs from the divine table. Worshippers are made to say “Have mercy on me” constantly. The church has told babies that they were “born in sin” and thus must be baptized lest they perish, and that as adults that they can do nothing good without God. It is a debilitating message and it comes at us from every corner of church life. Protestants are told that “Jesus died for your sins;” Catholics are told that the mass reenacts the sacrifice that Jesus made for their sinfulness. Both are little more than guilt messages. One sometimes wonders how congregations absorb this negativity so passively or why it has any appeal. >From the insights of psychiatry we now know the powerful truth that people who are abused, hurt and violated tend to become those who abuse, hurt and violate. It should not surprise us, therefore, to find in Christian history a pattern of constant and consistent victimization. Victimized people must always have a victim onto whom their defined negativity can be transferred. That is why the Christian Church throughout its history has always had a “designated victim” who could be publicly persecuted, someone to absorb the self hatred that this understanding of God forced us to bear. First it was the Jews and we Christians made anti-Semitism a shameful fact of history. Then it was the heretics whom we burned at the stake with clear consciences. Then it was the scientists who keep whittling away at our certainty. Next, in rapid succession, it was people of color whom Christians enslaved, segregated, dehumanized and isolated; then it was women who were forced to accept second class status; and finally, it was the homosexual persons, who became the newest victims of our guilt-laden religion. Our definition of homosexuality as “a deviant, immoral and evil lifestyle” justified our hostility. Darwin’s ideas threatened this strange, hostile theology on which the Christian Church built its power. Homosexual prejudice is thus only the newest battleground on which the church seeks to preserve its view of life and to justify its continued negativity toward its human victims. It is no wonder that resisting Darwin and repressing homosexuality elicits both the energy and the anger that it does in Christian circles today. What is really going on underneath the church’s attempt to defeat evolution and to repress homosexual persons is a struggle between a dying theology, based on false premises and manifesting itself in centuries of abuse, and a new, human, celebratory theology that is struggling to be born. In this new theology the call of the Christ figure is not to rescue the sinner so that the sinner can become the abuser of others; it is rather to empower us to become so fully human that we do not need a victim to victimize, but can become a new humanity, people who are not struggling to survive, but who are capable of giving our life and love away. A fully human Jesus, a new way besides sacrifice to view the cross and a new meaning to be found in the earliest Christian creed that in Jesus God has been engaged will be the hallmarks of this new theology. It is time for the Christian Church to make this shift in a conscious way.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Evolving Faith 2019 Our voices still matter. We can still find companionship. There is still hope. If you’re agnostic, please join us. If you’re a recovering evangelical, please join us. If you know what you’ve lost but are unsure what you’ll find, join us. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Copyright © 2019 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. | | | |

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Who do we know . . .
by James Wiegel 25 Sep '19

25 Sep '19

Who do we know that is connected with movie making? We have a grandson . . . Jenny's oldest . . also interested in Asia, the Middle East, applied math and engineering . . . He graduates in October, starts university next September . . Jim Wiegel “That which consumes me is not man, nor the earth, nor the heavens, but the flame which consumes man, earth, and sky." Nikos Kazantzakis 401 North Beverly Way,Tolleson, Arizona 85353 623-363-3277 jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com

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Farewell, Raymond.
by Del Morrill 23 Sep '19

23 Sep '19

Hi Bruce and other friends, I heard about Raymond’s death just recently, and am so glad someone kept me in the loop. Thanks to you, Bruce, for also letting me know. I always will remember some years ago when he and Elaine contacted us out of the blue wanting to stop and visit, when so many don’t think of Tacoma as part of their travels. It was a wonderful experience seeing Ray and Elaine after so many years. Not seeing him when we were in Australia now makes sense to me. I shall miss Raymond, as I have missed Elaine. We are finding that when we meet friends from the Order, even after 25 years, it seems like NO years have passed. There is some kind of bond that is filled with so much context and experience that little time is spent trying to get “re-acquainted”. More and more I find visits with friends refreshing my spirit, especially those from our ICA days. At least for me, our most wonderful trips have been where we’ve enjoyed such visits! And the idea of traveling becomes more centered around where friends are located. Personally, I’d like to see them before they (or we) are gone. With affection, Del Facebook.com/del.morrill.85 Location: USA, Pacific Northwest, Washington State, Tacoma <http://www.hypnocenter.com/> www.hypnocenter.com “Think your best thoughts; speak your best words, looking to your own conscience for approval.” (Susan B. Anthony) From: Bruce Robertson <robertson.bw(a)gmail.com> Sent: Friday, September 20, 2019 8:12 AM To: Del Morrill <delhmor(a)wamail.net> Subject: Re: Dazzling with magic and The Green Kid Hi Del, I wonder if you have received the news that Ray Richmond died Wednesday morning in Brisbane after an extended decline of memory and mental function over the last few years. We were able to see him about this time last year in a memory care facility. It was sad to see as I don’t think he fully realized who we were. We are relieved that his suffering is over and that “the old heretic” has gone on to theological debate with the Man himself. RIP.

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Ray Richmond
by Lawrence Philbrook 21 Sep '19

21 Sep '19

Robyn Ray will be missed — Dear colleagues, It is with great sadness that we announce the completed life of our dear friend and colleague, Ray Richmond. Ray passed away, following dementia in the Opal Aged Care facility in Browns Plains in Brisbane on Tuesday. Ray and Elaine were pillars of the ICA in Australia and globally, since the beginning. Sandy, Ray’s daughter, will let us know of funeral details. We invite you to send tributes to Ray, via this list or to Julie or us, and these will be shared with the family. Grace and Peace, Robyn, with ICAA Mike or Larry, could you please forward on to the OE and Dialogue listserves.

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Winds and Waves reminder September
by ICA International 17 Sep '19

17 Sep '19

Any problem reading this message please click or paste this URL in your browser's address bar http://windswaves.icai-archives.org/new-ww/ en français en español September 2019 This is a reminder for entries to our Winds and Waves Magazine We are delighted to invite you to share your stories here via this link medium.com/winds-and-waves We also welcome videos that show the work you are doing. And we would be delighted if you would share stories from Winds and Waves on your own social media networks. For information about how to work with Winds and Waves on Medium: Please see attachment here Please be sure to send this invitation on to your ICA members and friends, colleagues, partners, family, so they too can participate. You can get further information by contacting us at icawindandwaves(a)gmail.com Best wishes, Robyn, Dharma, Roma, Rosemary, Isabel, Peter, for W&W team Published by The Institute of Cultural Affairs International, 401 Richmond Street, West, Toronto, ON. M5V 3A8, Canada All rights reserved. For more information or to unsubscribe, email: inform(a)ica-international.org

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9/12/19, Progressing Spirit: Aurelia Davila Pratt: Let the Church die, here's why; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 12 Sep '19

12 Sep '19

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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv0406646269 #yiv0406646269templateBody .yiv0406646269mcnTextContent, #yiv0406646269 #yiv0406646269templateBody .yiv0406646269mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv0406646269 #yiv0406646269templateFooter .yiv0406646269mcnTextContent, #yiv0406646269 #yiv0406646269templateFooter .yiv0406646269mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } But letting the Church die doesn’t mean we abandon it. | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Let the Church die, here's why | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt September 12, 2019 I was nine years old the first time someone asked me, “What are you?” Fast forward twenty-five years later, and I’ve been asked this question more times than I can count. I am Chicana. I am Filipina. I am the color of the earth. I am a dark haired, dark eyed, brown skinned woman. Throughout my life, I have been profiled because of these features. I have experienced blatant forms of racism. I have been the recipient of all sorts of micro aggressions. My identity has been the butt of jokes by strangers and friends alike. People have spoken degradingly about my ethnicity right in front of me, with complete ignorance of the fact that they were speaking about me. On the “bright” side, because of tokenism, I’ve been offered speaking engagements and board positions. Although people are usually disappointed when they discover I don’t actually speak Spanish. Personally, this has long been a source of deep shame. It has taken me several years to begin to understand the intersections between this deep-rooted shame I carry and the white evangelical-influenced culture I grew up in. The truth is, the more I consider it, the more I am convinced my language was stolen from me long before I was born. Seventy-three years after the Mexican-American War created a new national boundary at the Rio Grande River, my grandmother was born in the border town of Brownsville, Texas. She was a product of what her ancestors experienced first-hand when their land was stolen and their culture left on the other side of an unwanted boundary line. “The Gringo, locked into the fiction of white superiority, seized complete political power, stripping Indians and Mexicans of their land while their feet were still rooted in it.” (La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldúa) My grandmother was a part of a people forced into a new paradigm over the course of generations. It was a culture marked by “in between-ness.” No longer fully Mexican, but unwanted and unvalued by American society and government. Because of this liminal space my grandma inherited, she spoke a Spanish unique to the borderlands. She was fully Tejana. But she never taught her children her language. Instead in the late 1940’s, along with countless other Mexican-Americans of their time, she and my grandpa became migrant fruit pickers as a way to travel north. Chicago is where my dad was born and raised. He is part of a generation of young Latinos in middle America who were physically punished if they were caught speaking Spanish in school. White supremacy stole both language and culture from him and his siblings, by means of societal assimilation. My dad married my mom, a second-generation Filipina, and by the time I was born, they had relocated to Louisiana. Eventually my parents divorced, and my mom moved back to the north, leaving my dad to raise me and my two older sisters. We grew up in a small, rural town where everyone identified as either “white” or “black.” So it didn’t take long for the teasing and questions to begin. “What are you?” teachers and students would ask me. Through my experiences with racism as a young child, I came to subconsciously believe that my skin was ugly. I didn’t have words for this then, but now I realize that falling asleep to my brownness was required of me in order to be accepted. By adolescence, I had become a pro at it. By college, I was able to laugh along at the jokes directed toward me. By graduate school, I quit thinking about it at all. It wasn’t until I became an adult, a pastor, and mother, that I began to look back and process my experiences with racism. I began to remember, and I began to wake up. So, “What am I?” I am Chicana. I am Filipina. I am the color of the earth. I am a dark haired, dark eyed, brown skinned woman, and throughout my life, I have been profiled because of these features. Does my name sound like I speak Spanish, and do I look like I speak it? Yes. Definitely. Do people assume I speak Spanish? All time and from every direction. But I do not. I don’t speak Spanish, pero estoy aprendiendo! I am learning! The fact that I can say these words is important because they are a symbol of my awakening and inner liberation. They represent a great undertaking of courage. They are a rejection of shame and assumptions. Estoy aprendiendo! I will claim my autonomy and self-worth. I will reclaim what was stolen from me. My grandmother may be gone, but her story and my father’s story are mine, too. In them, I find identity and power. I find language. I find home. In the past I would not have been brave enough to even believe it, but my story and experiences are relevant to the future of the Church. Over the last several years, there has been a shift in society, including in many progressive white churches. For the first time, white people are attempting to make significant room for black and brown voices. But, alongside this beautiful work is something white people were not prepared for. Many have been caught off guard by the collective pain of black and brown people. They don’t understand it, egos become fragile, and they become reactionary and defensive when confronted by it. This is happening everywhere, including in the Church. The progressive white church can be among the most difficult places for progress because it commonly assumes it is not complicit in the racist foundations and tendencies of our social structures. Regardless, the tides are changing. And as a woman of color who is also a pastor, I have been taking notice. My assessment is that Christianity and its Church can either join the flow of justice or flail against its changing tides. This flow is happening with or without you. Spirit is moving, creating a path of love, equality, and peacemaking in its wake. If you are of the mind to jump in to this divine current, then I have several points of advice for you. First, people and communities of faith: listen to people of color. In listening, make room for our stories, understanding that they won’t be pretty. Most likely, they will sound like pain; like grief; like anger. And it will be difficult to hear some of it without feeling offended. It will be hard to absorb the anger without getting angry back. But the challenge is to listen, to empathize, and to question how you might contribute to the wound, instead of denying the wound exists. It’s a lot to ask, I know! But listen. Become a practitioner in radical empathy and bear our burdens. And then, do something totally radical: put us on your staff and leadership teams. Actively value our perspectives, and highlight our opinions. For the first time ever, center our voices. Make room for all of what we bring to the table, not just our black and brown skin, our exotic names, and our smiles. Do the hard work necessary to get and keep people of color in the room. Become truly inclusive. The inclusive church environment should be willing to engage multiple diverse perspectives in such a way that will define organizational policy and practice. I learned this from my cousin, Hanif Fazal, who is the co-founder and CEO of The Center for Equity and Inclusion in Portland, Oregon. Hanif has spent over two decades addressing issues of equity, diversity and inclusion in organizations, and he says inclusion is about more than a sense of belonging. It’s not enough that someone feels welcome or seen. Inclusion is a shift in power so that diverse voices are shaping the culture. When Christianity and its Church become truly inclusive of marginalized voices, be prepared for the image of God to evolve and expand. God is transformed because God is freed from her box now. Make space; make room. It will deepen your faith to hear from the God of a person of color. The change will likely be uncomfortable. It will be different. Make space; make room. Let this liberation happen. Avoid copying and pasting. It is a tool that prevents good change. I have been very attuned to the way church culture will often try to “copy and paste” their expectations onto pastors, especially women and people of color. This is often unintentional, so becoming aware of these tendencies is really important. I can’t preach with the same style, tone and intonation as the mainly male preachers I learned about in seminary, because I am not a male. I can’t pastor like a white man when I’m a brown woman. When I try to do anything other than be fully who I am, my creativity is stifled, and my imagination is held hostage. It may seem simple, but realizing I no longer have to conform to this “copy and paste” mentality was like being set free. Churches, set your pastors free! When they thrive, you thrive. The Church thrives. And if it’s not obvious by now, let me be clear: the Church must change in order to thrive. It has to do more than change. It has to die. In fact, the church is already dying. Evangelical Christians are grasping at thin air, desperate to protect oppressive traditions from “secular” culture. Politicians have combined their power hungry paradigms with a destructive, patriarchal image of God, and are using it to manipulate the masses. The teachings of Jesus are being completely abandoned for the sake of Christian nationalism. And yet, young people aren’t buying the institutionalized hate, and people of all ages are quitting church in droves. The flailing isn’t working. The pews are empty. The Church is dying, and I say: let it die. But letting the Church die doesn’t mean we abandon it. Instead we need to sit with it, hold its hand and keep vigil, ushering it from one life to the next. We need to let it die, so it can be reborn. This isn’t easy, but I believe rebirth is possible. On the other side of this rebirth is the transfigured Church. Transfiguration literally means a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state. At his own transfiguration, Jesus shone so bright that his dirty travel clothes became sparkling white, and his face shone like the sun. He must have been nearly unrecognizable. A transfigured church would also be unrecognizable. It would mean that it experienced a complete change of form or appearance. It would mean that everything old has passed away, and everything has become new (which sounds a lot to me like making room, by the way). What if we made changing and transforming until we didn’t even recognize ourselves anymore the work of the Church? What if we stopped at nothing until that work was done? The future of the Church has big implications. It has been the catalyst for much good, but also so much evil. Its power continues to be used to sustain oppressive domination systems, propping up -isms and phobias. The power of the Church is immeasurable, and because of this, I have come to realize that it is not enough to abandon ship. If we leave, not much will change. But if we work to reclaim, reimagine, and recreate, then people can be set free. People need permission and a safe space in which to shift their theological paradigms. These same paradigms influence their social understanding all the way to their political vote. We need to be a part of the Church’s rebirth, so that we can offer this important and sacred space. If I could sum up kingdom work, it would be this: Let the Church die, so it can be reborn as a catalyst for change. I’ve lived a lifetime of isolation from my heritage. I have lived in a house of shame that has kept me from moving, from doing my work in the world, from believing and sharing my own truth. I know shame when I see it, and I can recognize its mark permeating throughout the Church. Instead of owning how we have wounded people of color, women, and the LGBTQIA community, the Church has kept its head down, pretending these wounds don’t exist. Instead of acknowledging the ways in which racism continues to inform American Christian culture, the Church’s actions reveal a refusal to listen and an underlying assumption that the past is not our shared responsibility. But I think of my grandmother and her ancestors’ stolen land and culture. I think of how this shaped the trajectory of lives for generations, including my father’s. Including mine. For years I thought I was unique in my pain; alone in this liminal space. I was too ashamed to find my people, much less share my experiences with them. When I finally did, I realized they carried the shame, too. Every person I’ve asked: pain. We’ve all inherited it, and like it or not, we each carry it with us daily. The evils of white supremacy have kept us isolated and silenced. Pero estoy aprendiendo! But I am learning! No more! I will reclaim the language that was stolen from me. I will take back my voice. ~ Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt Read online here About the Author Aurelia Dávila Pratt is the Lead Pastor at Peace of Christ Church and is a licensed Master of Social Work. Her sermons and writings steer the listener toward contemplation while also boldly tackling social issues of the day. She prioritizes the work of Peace, believing it to be both a vertical and horizontal process that is disruptive and uncomfortable, but mystically healing. As a pastor, she promotes safe and creative space for all to participate in this work. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Jeff What exactly is meant by the word ‘spiritual’? If it only refers to ghosts, angels, (theistic) gods, demons and such then it’s clearly just a metaphor for the unexplainable aspects of life. In what way is ‘spiritual’ different to emotional, psychological or even just our individual ‘personality’? We refer to body, mind and spirit – but aren’t mind and spirit just the same thing? Is the term ‘spirituality’ an outmoded concept? A: By Rev. Matthew Syrdal Great questions Jeff! Unfortunately, the word ‘spiritual’ is often used as a sort of catch-all for a lot of different meanings. For example, a First Nations person or a traditional Hindu might have a very different sense of what ‘spiritual’ means than a contemporary Western person like myself. In the West, the word ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirit’ derives from the Latin which is a transliteration of two Hebrew words ruach and nephesh. Ruach means ‘breath’, ‘wind’, and ‘spirit’. It is not differentiated from the Creation, the invisible not yet differentiated from the visible. The Spirit is the animating and animate living presence of the divine in and through the creation, which is consequentially closer to many indigenous and animistic understandings of the cosmos and the Creator. An orthodox Judeo-Christian view would be that humans participate in this life-breath as does the more-than-human world. We derive the word ‘inspired’ from this sense of being in-breathed by the presence of divinity that fills the whole world. In the Old Testament the inspiration of the Spirit of God contributed to master works and the craftsmanship of artisans, as well as the oracles of the prophets. The Roman sense of ‘genius’ or the Greek ‘muse’ would be somewhat close to this understanding of the inspiration of the Spirit. Nephesh on the other hand, often interpreted, ‘animated being’ or ‘living soul’ is the psycho-spiritual mysterious ‘personhood’ that transcends and includes our physical body. This term is closer to the animistic vision of animal guides and spirit beings of the otherworld who traditionally were associated with sacred places. When you refer to ghosts, angels, gods, demons and heavenly beings and the like, this sounds to me closer to a sense of the ‘spirit world’ or ‘spiritism’ than how many people use the word ‘spiritual’ as our personal transcendent function. This is significant, because we have a tendency in the West to psychologize the spiritual mysteries in a way the indigenous do not. The animistic view of the spirit world maintains the autonomy and freedom of spiritual realities and powers in themselves, without resorting to contingency or fabrication of the human mind or ego. I do not believe the study of ‘spirituality’ and the importance of it for our age of climatic transformation is outmoded in the least. The reason is because we stand at a threshold in ecological history. We are summoned to undergo a major collective shift in consciousness. Any exploration of spirituality must be experiential, and we must ask the double edged question: what is the Earth/cosmos really? And in light of that question, what does it mean to be truly human? Thank you for your question. ~ Rev. Matthew Syrdal Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Matthew Syrdal M.Div., lives in the front range of Colorado with his beautiful family. Matt is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian church (USA), founder and lead guide of WilderSoul and Church of Lost Walls and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country. In his years of studying ancient Christian Rites of Initiation, world religions, anthropology, rites-of-passage and eco- psychology Matt seeks to re-wild what it means to be human. His work weaves in myth and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world in which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in the discovery of “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. Matt has been coaching, and guiding since becoming a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute and is currently training to become a soul initiation guide through the SAIP program. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community! | | | | | | Join our FB community today! Spread the word, share with friends. Thanks! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the Bible, Part VI: The Third Document in the Torah Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong May 14, 2008 The name of the Torah’s fifth and final book according to the Bible is Deuteronomy. That name comes to us from the combination of two Greek words: “deutero,” which means second, and “nomas,” which means law. Deuteronomy thus means the second giving of the law and in that title the story of the book’s origin is revealed. First, a quick review of what I have covered in this series thus far. We began by identifying the oldest strand of narrative material that is found in the Bible, namely that part of the Torah that is called the “Yahwist” version, written in the middle years of the 10th century. This narrative represented the history of the dominant tradition of the Jews, located in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. It extolled the centers of power in that part of the Jewish world: the Royal House of David that ruled by divine right; the capital city of Jerusalem, which was believed to be the place where heaven and earth came together; the Temple, the very dwelling place of God; and the High Priest, believed to be the authoritative voice of God on earth. This was the only sacred history the Jews had until a civil war, following the death of King Solomon, succeeded in separating the ten Northern tribes of the Hebrew people from the Kingdom of Judah and its satellite, the little tribe of Benjamin. This successful revolution removed the Israelites in the North from each of those centers of Southern Jewish power, the House of David, the city of Jerusalem and the Temple and its priests. The Jews of the North could thus hardly continue to use the Yahwist document as their sacred story, since that text judged them with its own words as rebels against God, God’s Temple, God’s city and those thought to be both chosen and anointed by God. In time this new country, born in revolution, established its own monarchy, but on a very different and more democratic basis. The king was now chosen by the people and thus was subject to removal by the people. A new capital city of Samaria was built and the ancient shrines in Hebron, Beersheba and Bethel were set up to be worship places to rival the Temple in Jerusalem. In time these tribes even felt compelled to write their version of their sacred history and so a court historian was chosen to do this task. This narrative would focus not on King David, but on the one they portrayed as Jacob’s favorite son, who was the child of his favorite wife, Rachel. His name was Joseph and he was regarded as the patriarch and founder of the Northern Kingdom. Because this new history referred to God as Elohim it became known as the Elohist or “E” version of the Jewish sacred story. These two rival kingdoms lived together side by side, although not always in peace, until the Northern Kingdom was defeated in warfare by the Assyrians in 721 BCE. The people of the Northern Kingdom were then removed by their conquerors to other lands and disappeared into the DNA of the Middle East. After this disaster, an unknown person brought a copy of the Elohist document to Jerusalem and in time the two sacred stories were merged into one document with the Yahwist tradition clearly dominant over the Elohist story. This merged version was then the sacred scriptures of the Jewish people for about a century. In 621 BCE in the Southern Kingdom, encouraged and shaped by a group of prophets, among whom Jeremiah was surely one, there was a growing fervor for religious reform. These prophets focused their hopes on a young king named Josiah, who had succeeded to the throne at the age of eight when his father, King Amon, was murdered by his own servants. Josiah was a king who, in the eyes of the prophets, “did what was right in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right or the left (II Kings 22:1-2).” Perhaps that was because King Josiah was attentive to and a supporter of the worship of the Temple. When the king reached the age of 26, he ordered major renovations to be done on the Temple that presumably had fallen into some disrepair and neglect under the reigns of previous kings in the line of David, who had allowed many pagan practices in the Temple. This restoration of the Temple was hugely popular with the religious authorities and the prophets. During this restoration, however, a mysterious event occurred that was destined to shape the worship life of the entire country. First, the Book of Kings tells us that these renovations were to be done with the money collected from the people over the years and presumably not spent by previous kings. Second, it was ordered that no accounting of their expenditures would be required for “they deal honestly (II Kings 22:7).” Next came an “electrifying discovery.” In the renovation, perhaps hidden behind some of the plaster that was being torn away, the workers found a book that purported to be “a book of the law.” The book even claimed to have been written by Moses, who by this time had been dead for some 600 years. The book, discovered by Hilkiah the High Priest, was sent to the king by a man named Shaphan, who was described as “the secretary in the house of the Lord,” and it was read to the king in its entirety. When King Josiah heard these words, we are told that he tore his clothes in an act of public penitence because it was obvious that the “Word of the Lord” found in this book had not been obeyed by their ancestors. Next, a female prophetess named Huldah was produced and she declared, in her most solemn voice I’m sure, that unless the commands of this book were obeyed, God would bring “disaster on this place and its inhabitants.” Huldah went on to say that because the good King Josiah had responded with penitence and had “humbled himself before the Lord,” by tearing his clothes and weeping publicly, that so long as he was king these terrible punishments would not occur. This message was then delivered to the king. Josiah, empowered by the word of God that in this newly discovered book claimed to be the words of the prophet Moses and said by the prophetess Huldah to have the ability of holding back the wrath of God as long as he was alive, clearly now had the authority to proceed. The words of this new book were then read to the whole people and a new covenant, reflecting its values, was adopted and it was established that this book would henceforth govern their common life. A great reformation of the worship practices of the Temple and Judah was then carried out. The reformers removed from the Temple all the vessels made for deities other than Yahweh. All idolatrous priests were deposed. All houses of male temple prostitutes, associated with the fertility rites of the deity known as Baal, were closed and torn down. Religious shrines suspected of encouraging pagan worship were destroyed. All mediums, soothsayers and fortune tellers were put out of business. Josiah even went into what had once been the Northern Kingdom and destroyed the rival shrines in Samaria and Bethel. This reform also required that the Passover be celebrated only in Jerusalem, where its liturgical purity could be guaranteed. The prophets of Yahweh said of King Josiah that there had been “no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul and with all his might, according to the Law of Moses; nor did anyone like him arise after him (II Kings 23:25).” One purpose of worship is always the human attempt to please the deity and thus to win divine blessing and protection. That was certainly the hope of those who engineered this enthusiastic reformation. They were also the ones who, in all probability, wrote, planted and “discovered” this new book of Moses. They then engineered the political campaign that led to its adoption. We do not know the names of the people who constituted this group of reformers although the prophet Jeremiah clearly seems to have been one of them. They are simply called the “Deuteronomic Writers.” By the power of their leadership in this reformation, however, they took the Jewish sacred story previously known as the “Yahwist-Elohist” version of the scriptures and incorporated into it the Book of Deuteronomy, “the second giving of the law.” Then they set about to edit the entire sacred story into a consistent narrative until it became identified as the Yahwist-Elohist-Deuteronomic version of the scriptures. The third strand of material that would some day be called the Torah was now in place. The great hoped for protection of God that they believed would come to them if they only worshiped God properly, however, did not materialize. The distress and hard times that had fallen on the land of Judah not only continued, but seemed to intensify. The Book of Kings (specifically II Kings 23:26) recorded the fact that despite these wide-ranging reforms: “Still the Lord did not turn from the fierceness of his great wrath, which his anger had kindled against Judah.” The Lord was heard to warn that just as Israel (the Northern Kingdom) had been removed from the face of the earth, so Judah (the Southern Kingdom) would also be removed, but not so long as Josiah lived. A few short years later, Josiah was killed on the battlefield of Megiddo by Pharaoh Necho of Egypt, who was fighting against Josiah’s ally, the Assyrians. His death was so devastating to the Jews that Megiddo came to be thought of as the site where the ultimate battle that would precede the end of the world would occur. Armageddon is nothing but the modern spelling of Megiddo. The deluge that had been promised by the prophets to come only after the death of King Josiah now began to fall on the Jewish nation. It came in the form of defeat, devastation and an exile into Babylon from their land that was destined to last some three generations. It was in that desperate period of Jewish history that the final strand of material that was to constitute the Torah was written. Again, the earlier strands were edited in the light of this new material reflecting Judah’s new circumstances. We will turn to that story when this series continues. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements The Visionaries Summit The Visionaries Summit is where innovative approaches to the most critical issues of our time are introduced, explored and amplified. Not only do we come together to cross-pollinate and meld ideas in order to create the future we all deserve, but we come together to shift our perspectives, and activate the next level of our potential for the evolutionary challenges ahead. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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RS-1 Friday night conversation
by Jann McGuire 11 Sep '19

11 Sep '19

Jim, I'm neurotic enough to still have my RS-1 file folders. The Friday evening conversation was 1) full name and one thing that grounds in history (I remember not understanding exactly what that meant.) 2) First name and book. 3) First name and movie. 4 ) First name and one pressing concern.

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