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Funeral Service
by Zoe Barley 15 Feb '20

15 Feb '20

1 0

2/13/20, Progressing Spirit: Gretta Vosper: Queen's Dream; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 13 Feb '20

13 Feb '20

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.yiv3942516173mcnTextContent, #yiv3942516173 #yiv3942516173templateHeader .yiv3942516173mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv3942516173 #yiv3942516173templateBody .yiv3942516173mcnTextContent, #yiv3942516173 #yiv3942516173templateBody .yiv3942516173mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv3942516173 #yiv3942516173templateFooter .yiv3942516173mcnTextContent, #yiv3942516173 #yiv3942516173templateFooter .yiv3942516173mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Queen's Dream | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Gretta Vosper February 13, 2020Oscar Buzz Late in December, just as Oscar buzz begins, I choose five or six movies to explore during the five or six weeks leading up to the awards. Originally, the films, chosen long before the nominations are announced, were all ones I believed would receive a nomination for Best Picture. Only once had I chosen a movie that wasn’t and I swear, if I’d known it was a musical, it would never have been on the billing! More recently, we’ve branched out into movies that should have received Best Picture, or, as in this year, movies I thought would be nominated for a variety of things – best supporting actor or screenwriter, for instance. Part of that shift was motivated by the consistent and problematic whiteness of the awards. The only way to get around that was to make our own list. Having done so, only two of the films we watched received nominations at all. Which may or may not say something significant. The first three films we watched had subtitles: The Farewell, Parasite, and For Sama.[1] Often few have seen the film and I am adamant about not giving out spoilers (though For Sama spoilers, a documentary film about Aleppo and the war in Syria, play themselves out on our nightly news). But I’ll have to be more careful: when I spoke about Parasite, the only spoiler-ish thing I said was that if you cover your eyes, you can’t read the subtitles. Unfortunately, many took that to mean the movie is a brutal bloodbath, which it really isn’t, and avoided it completely, missing one of the best films ever made, in my opinion. The Farewell, with comic brilliance, displayed the challenges of two worlds trying to be one. Parasite – well, you’re just going to have to see it. Layer after layer of storyline, all of it believable, all of it offering shades of truths we may or may not want to explore. For Sama, a powerful documentary made for Sama, a child born into the war in Aleppo, turns our eyes toward the simplicity of heroism, the tragedy of death, and the idiocy of some of the things that demand them both. Black History Month We entered Black History Month with Queen and Slim, as powerful a film about the disaster that is race relations in the United States (and elsewhere) as you will ever find. Had we no title for the movie, we would not have known the names of the characters until very late in the film, tying the worn truths to a universalism that is as stunning as it is disgraceful. Perhaps it wasn’t nominated for any awards because it lays those truths bare. Perhaps, as others will argue, there were just too many great films this year. Whatever…. Each week, I write a piece to read as the “Focused Moment”. It’s not really a reading; I guess you could call it spoken word. Scott improvises on the piano as I read and continues to play once I’ve taken my seat, providing a meditative moment. On the Sunday we looked at Queen and Slim, my challenge was to get in underneath the privilege I have experienced my whole life, privilege that even makes me oblivious to its enormous power. Not only do I know that privilege, because of it, I cannot accurately see the price it exacts. Still, I tried to bring my ignorance up against the truths laid bare in the movie and reported in too many (or too few?) nightly news updates. I know my mother held me through those bright afternoons when I was too sick to go to school. She held me close, up against her breast, pillows stuffed under her arm so she could hold me longer, steady me until I fell asleep sitting upright, the only way to still my heaving chest. But I wonder what she thought about as she sat there: the day she’d had; when I’d get well; the meals she’d make tomorrow; next week’s visit to the eye doctor; or when my sisters would get home from school. I know she didn’t wonder if my sisters would come home at all. I know she didn’t worry for their safety except, perhaps, from rubber balls they threw too hard, skipping ropes they swung too fast, boys they might be kissing far too soon. We were children and we glowed. White. Not brown, or black, or in between. Not already scarred inside by words learned at kitchen tables, shared in playgrounds, embedded in “the norm”. White. Not fighting an uphill battle every single day on the gravel of the playground, torn knees from play, and blackened eyes from not. White. Not afraid to use the washroom, running home and back so fast you’d not get caught, avoiding hatred, hard edges, and fists that didn’t clench ‘til you arrived. White. Not met halfway home by a mother frantic that an hour has gone and you just playing in the schoolyard working to overcoming the bruises you’d tell her happened while you played. My mother’s arms around me, I slept, no greater problem for her to bear than the complication of a common cold; no greater fear for her to quell than any mother with a child who glowed white.[2]Another Poem There was already a poem, of sorts, in Queen and Slim that pulls the movie beyond race to a wider audience, inviting all in the audience to connect. Powerfully. Slim, who met Queen on a Tinder date, asks Queen what it is she is looking for in a guy. Her response is exquisitely considered and plucks the strings of the universal heart. I want a guy to show me myself. I want him to love me so deeply, I'm not afraid to show him how ugly I can be. I want him to show me scars I never knew I had. But I don't want him to make them go away. I want him to hold my hand while I nurse them myself. And I want him to cherish the bruises they leave behind.[3] Sigh. Can’t you just feel that? Wow. (p.s. If you have that sort of partner, don’t gloat.) On Sunday morning, rather than building on Queen’s relationship ideals, I teased her response into the cultural need for white to see black, and black, alongside white, to take responsibility for healing. To challenge white people to learn to love a population they too often fear. To let that love be so deep, that the insidious white demand upon black for social perfection, non-confrontational engagement, ongoing submission, and a politeness too-reminiscent of slavery, might evaporate, allowing for real conversations, real interactions to take place, possible simply because no one feels uneasy anymore. An atmosphere of trust could unfold in that kind of love. I stretched Queen’s dreamy relationship hopes beyond the very white need to fix everything; though there is much that is systemic that whites need to fix, there is much out of which whites must keep their noses and simply stand back as the space for healing opens up within the black community itself, graced by the simple fact that it can. In the middle of such a relationship, truth can go both ways, scars will be uncovered but not universalized; not ever universalized. And each will find their own ways to heal, bearing their scars forward with humility. Not a bad message, I suppose. Deeper Truths; Bigger Challenges When I read the quote the next day, however, it spoke deeper truths to me. It spoke of our quest for the kind of perfection we have only ever cast up to the heavens or into the depths of the sea, sought in the forest, or heard in the screams of one we’ve believed possessed. Have we not long wanted a god that sees our every flaw and failure and loves us anyway? To find a way to stand humbly before that god and still be loved in all our ugliness? Wanted the guidance such a god would provide, steering us toward truths we might otherwise feel compelled to outrun? Feel the strength of such a god in our effort to heal ourselves, incorporating that god’s courage, wisdom, and love into that much needed undertaking? And, at the end of it, don’t we still want to carry the remnant bruises forward, reminding ourselves of the work we did with the help of that powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-loving god? Of course, it is not just a racial issue that hammers at the foundations of our social order. Or a gender identity or sexuality issue. Or political, social, or familial. It is an issue that is experienced by all of us and that undermines our self-confidence, and our willingness to be vulnerable, our ability to see what is really before us, something Queen and Slim are finally able to do. At the heart of our deepest despair is the pandemic issue of not being seen. When we stand before one another, we are each clothed with our social or professional standings, our gender, race, sexuality, religion, or any of the myriad decorations by which the human brain sorts and categorizes those it meets. Indeed, we are cloaked in these attributes even as we stand before our own bathroom mirrors. What would it take to be seen? What would it take to create a world in which being seen was a serious undertaking, the prime directive, perhaps? No Help from Our Brains I believe our brains fail us in this work, prejudiced as they are toward their millisecond analysis of what stands before them and which results in a barely evolved assessment of whether to flee, fight, freeze, or f*&k. We need to get beyond these basic drives and our brains won’t help us if we don’t help them. As we face the most critical challenge humanity has ever faced – climate and ecosystem disaster and the subsequent breakdown of civilization as we know it – falling back on our evolutionary four f’s will be the instinctual choice. Not doing so will require that we will already have prepared for these coming challenges and through far more than the use of advanced scientific and ecological breakthroughs. Not doing so will depend upon our providing our brains with credible options. It is my belief that addressing the issue of not being seen can be one of the most potent means through which we can find and trust one another into the unknown future humanity will face. Seeing one another is one of the most important things we can train our brains to do. Really Seeing; Really Being Seen How do we do that? We get our heads out of the mud and muck of our religious traditions and into the work of engagement, of bringing people together so that they can fall in love with one another in the deeply honest, deeply accepting way that Queen offers us. Creating space for intimacy, inviting and exhibiting vulnerability, laying out the spectrum of beingness that community offers, and the space and patience it can provide for healing to happen. Our brains may not know how to do this intuitively, but our experience, our fear, and our longing can teach us, beginning with the stories of our childhoods and the accretions through which we learned to hide our truths from both ourselves and others. It is not easy to be vulnerable. It is not easy to expose our scars, our ugliness to one another. Sometimes, it is not even easy for us to accept we have scars or ugliness at all, so strong has been our habituation to the social constructs in which we live and by which we calculate our “success”. But we are more alike than we often remember – our scars, our shames, our weaknesses, our addictions, our disasters. In our beauty and our ugliness, we can reflect one another’s truths and learn to embrace both theirs and our own. Let me see you. Let us see one another.~ Rev. Gretta Vosper About the Author The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers. Visit her website here. Read online here[1] I admired one reviewer who referred to doing the work of getting over the two-inch high wall at the bottom of the screen; brilliant way to nudge people past the perception that subtitles are an obstruction![2] White, ©2020 gretta vosper[3] Queen, Queen and Slim, © 2019, Universal Pictures; Lena Waithe, Screenwriter; Director, Melina Matsoukas | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By A Reader I recently read that a team of astrophysicists have concluded that there are over a trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Given what we know and given the photos of the universe available today, how can I possibly conceive of God? A: By Carl Krieg Dear Reader,During biblical times the three-tiered universe provided a place for God and for us: God was up, the nether world was down, and we stood on the plane in the middle. Thinking he had disproven a religious hypothesis, the first Russian cosmonaut went up in space and reported that he found no god up there. Today, not only do we know the world is a sphere, with no up and down, but also that the universe “out there” is literally beyond imagination. There may be a trillion galaxies that we can see in theory- the observable universe- but then there exists what can never be known because it is accelerating in its moving away, and its light will never reach us. We will remain in total and eternal ignorance of that unknowable part of the universe. We are, alas, a tiny speck in this ocean of infinity. And yet, the presence of God is as near to us as our neighbor. Remembering one of Jesus’ most famous parables, a man approached Jesus and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life? Jesus responded quoting the Shema: You know the answer. Love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and your neighbor as yourself. And the man asked: who is my neighbor? “A man was walking…” Jesus tells us, and was beaten and robbed, “and then a Samaritan came along…”. We all know the story. When we love, we make God real in our own life, and this experience is so much more than conceiving God, it is manifesting God. God is love, and that is something we can experience and know right here and right now.There continue to be many attempts to find a place for God to be in the universe. Some say God can be identified as the consciousness of the universe. Some say God may be found in extra dimensions that exist right alongside us. Some say in the dark energy inhering space-time. Perhaps. But we need not look any further than the fullness of God’s creation that surrounds us and the love that upholds us. And when we in turn reach out in love, we do better than conceive of God. We make God incarnate in our own life.Most people today in our culture do not even use the word “God”, and that trend continues and increases. Many in the church decry the trend toward secularism, but the movement seems not only inevitable, but is, I think, beneficial, and beneficial in the sense that it focuses on the essence of who God is and what God wants. The Hebrew prophet Amos put it starkly, teaching us that God hates and despises the festivals and takes no delight in the solemn assemblies of religious institution, but instead desires that “justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”. Jesus echoed that sentiment exactly, and secularists are as capable of fighting for justice as are religious folk. We don’t need to use the word “God” when we have the word “love”. And we don’t need to conceive of God in the abstract when we can love our neighbor. As we gaze into the infinity of the stars out there, we have three options for the attitude we can take. One is to believe that the universe is amoral. It cares not about anything, just moving along. The second is the thought that evil runs the show. The last is to see everything as imbued with love, and that really is the message of Jesus’ life, death and new life, that ultimately, death and destruction are overcome, and love rules the day.~ Carl Krieg Read and share online here About the Author Dr. Carl Krieg received his BA from Dartmouth College, MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in NYC, and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of What to Believe? the Questions of Christian Faith, and The Void and the Vision. As professor and pastor, Dr. Krieg has taught innumerable classes and led many discussion groups. He lives with his wife, Margaret, in Norwich, VT. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community! | | | | | | Join our FB community today! Spread the word, share with friends. Thanks! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the Bible, Part XVIII: Amos, The Prophet Who Transformed God Into Justice Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong December 18, 2008Not every character in the Bible starts out to be a hero. Indeed, one of the great themes of biblical literature is that it is the meek and the lowly who become the channels through which God is known in new ways. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is portrayed as expressing this theme in the Magnificat when she is made to utter these words, “For he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden,” but later generations “will call me blessed.” The Old Testament prophet who makes this truth powerfully real is named Amos. Today we turn to his story. Amos was a citizen of the Southern Kingdom of Judah in the 8th century BCE. He lived in the village of Tekoa where he was a herdsman and a keeper of sycamore trees, employment that hardly demanded high academic achievements or the credentials that produced great expectations. In those days Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam II was on the throne of the Northern Kingdom. The major powers of the world were preoccupied with their own problems and with each other, which allowed these two small Jewish states to bask in an Indian summer of prosperity, peace and wealth. The distribution of that wealth was, however, hardly balanced. The worship places of the Jewish world were crowded on holy days and religion was popular among the greedy ones who dominated the social order. There thus appeared to be little relationship between the words of the popular religion and the practices of people’s lives in the public arena. In many ways that is not dissimilar from the current situation in the United States, where a few have achieved fortunes by greed and manipulation of the markets, creating a situation in which the wealthy are increasingly wealthy and the poor are increasingly poor and people even now seem not to be concerned. This dichotomy, however, burned itself into the consciousness of this simple herdsman named Amos and, like the proverbial “Hound of Heaven,” it allowed him no rest until he had addressed this issue overtly and publicly. Amos packed his suitcase and journeyed from Tekoa in the land of Judah to the shrine of Bethel in the Northern Kingdom to make his witness. When he arrived Amos entered the courtyard of this holy place, where all of his suspicions were confirmed. He saw the crowds dressed in their finery busily attending to holy things while the poor outside the city gates were largely ignored. Amos wondered how he might get the crowd’s attention. He was a clever man, however, and knew how to appeal to the instincts of the people. He found a corner in the courtyard, set up a soap box and then, using one of the oldest tricks in human history, he began to solicit first the curiosity and later the full attention of the crowd. Let me try to recreate the story. “Come closer,” Amos shouted from his makeshift pulpit, “Let me tell you about the sins of the people of the city of Damascus.” Amos knew that everyone likes to hear gossip about the moral weaknesses of their neighbors and so as he excoriated the Damascans the crowds grew. Next he turned his judgment first on the people of Gaza and then on Tyre, condemning the sinful practices found in both cities. The crowd, loving it, grew even larger as Amos continued to appeal to their prejudices about and suspicions of their neighbors. This strange looking rube from the south said the things they wanted to hear. Then Amos moved to larger targets and his oratory rose to new heights as he focused on the nation states surrounding the Northern Kingdom. First it was the Edomites and about their sins Amos got more specific. The Edomites had pursued “their brothers with a sword, showing them no pity and they had allowed anger to tear perpetually” at the fabric of their society. The ecstatic crowd began to shout, “You tell ’em, preacher.” With every loud voice of encouragement, the people gathered in ever greater numbers. Next it was the Amorites’ turn. According to Amos, they had attacked Gilead and “ripped up the women with child in order to enlarge their borders.” As Amos pronounced his message of doom on these nations, the people gathered around him roared their approval. When he turned to the very unpopular Moabites the frenzy of the crowd exploded. Next Amos, with the crowd in the palm of his hand and fully attentive, spoke in a bare whisper. “Now let me tell you about the sins of the Southern Jews,” he said. These Southern Jews were the people with whom the Jews of the North were the most competitive and with whom they had the deepest rivalry. The relationship between Judah in the South and Israel in the North was like that of New Zealand and Australia today. Signs in shops in New Zealand announce that “New Zealanders have two favorite teams, the All Blacks (the name of New Zealand’s national team) and anyone who is playing Australia.” So to hear their Jewish rivals in the south be condemned was music to the ears of the Northern Jews. The crowd pressed closer to this strange messenger and its size continued to increase dramatically. Those Southern Jews, Amos said, “despised the Torah; they did not keep God’s commandments. Their lies caused them to err constantly,” but God’s justice is sure, he promised, and so Jerusalem will be “devoured by the fire of God.” The crowd was ecstatic with enthusiasm, clapping and cheering. No one budged as this crowd-pleasing evangelist reached his climax. Now with every ear straining to hear, this herdsman arrived at the conclusion for which he had journeyed from Tekoa to the King’s chapel in Bethel. His message was ready and so Amos turned to his climax. “Now,” he said, “let me tell you about the worst people in the world.” The crowd could hardly wait to hear who that would be. They were not prepared, however, for what was to come. “You Jews of the Northern Kingdom,” he said, “are the ultimate culprits in God’s world. You are the ones who worship ostentatiously in the sacred shrines, but even as you worship, you sell the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes. You trample the poor in the dust of the earth. You violate one another sexually. You worship at every altar in garments stolen from the labor of the poor. You profane holy places with heavy drinking of wine purchased with fines levied against the meek. You corrupt holy people, encouraging them to violate their sacred vows. You even silence the prophets.” The crowd was suddenly silent and the smiles disappeared from their faces. Then Amos spoke of the punishment that God would send. “This judgment is inevitable,” he screamed. It was a devastating message. The stunned crowd took a while to recover from shock, so Amos continued to drive home his key insights. “Worship isolated from life is of no value. Worship is nothing but justice being offered to God, and justice is nothing but worship being lived out. If worship and justice are ever separated, idolatry is the inevitable result.” It was a stirring message, but suddenly it was not a popular one. When the members of the crowd recovered sufficiently to respond, they sent for a priest from the Shrine at Bethel named Amaziah and asked him to come to their defense, for they said, “Amos has conspired against you and the land and we are not able to bear his words.” Amaziah was the voice of the established religion. He would brook no more of this interference with worship at the King’s Shrine and so to Amos he said: “O, Seer, go home, flee away to your land in Judah. Prophesy there if you must, but you are never again to come again to Bethel for this is the king’s sanctuary. This is the temple of our nation. Your words are not welcome here.” Amos responded to Amaziah, “I am no prophet, nor even a prophet’s son. I am a herdsman, a dresser of sycamore trees, yet the Lord took me from my flocks and called me to prophesy to the people of Israel.” Once again, he repeated his charges. “The songs of your holy places will become nothing but wailing to the Lord. You cannot worship while you trample the poor. You cannot wring money from the poor to line your pockets with greed. God will turn your sacred feasts into mourning and your pious songs into lamentations.” The preaching of Amos was now more than the people were willing to tolerate and so Amos was physically driven from the shrine. Rejected and defeated he returned to his humble life in Tekoa. In this newly imposed exile he wrote out his prophetic message, and that message became known as the words of Amos the Prophet. In time people heard transcendent truth in his words and finally these words were added to the sacred text of the Jewish people and were thus read in worship settings in the temples, synagogues and holy places. That was when people began to recognize that in the words of Amos, they were beginning to hear the “Word of the Lord.” That is how the words of Amos came to echo through the centuries. In that process, God was inevitably redefined as justice. Worship and justice could never again be separated in true Judaism and worship came to be viewed, as Amos had suggested, as human justice offered to God while justice was seen as divine worship being acted out. In this context justice became another name for God. It was through the work of the prophets primarily that God was redefined in Jewish history. Love became the name for God through the writings of Hosea. Justice became the name for God through the writings of Amos. The prophets really do matter, not because they were the predictors of the future as so many of us were once taught, but because they were able to see more deeply into the meaning of God. The prophets more than anyone else made it possible some eight hundred years later for people to see and to hear the presence of God in the life of a crucified one named Jesus of Nazareth. The life of Jesus pointed to a divine nature marked by the dimension of love that Hosea had added to the meaning of God and the dimension of justice that Amos had added to the meaning of God. That resulted in a new understanding of consciousness in which divinity and humanity seemed to flow together as one. The biblical story was never static, nor is the human understanding of God. It is idolatry and an act of faithlessness that is being expressed when any one thinks that all truth has finally been revealed and that someone or some institution actually possesses it.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements The Meaning and Challenge of Resurrection with John Dominic Crossan Renowned New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity, John Dominic Crossan will be speaking at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Santa Barbara, CA, on February 21 & 22, 2020. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Fwd: [DailyMeditations] 2/4/20: Moving Beyond Evil: Wisdom from Howard Thurman
by Marianna Bailey 06 Feb '20

06 Feb '20

Dear Colleagues, This is one meditation dealing with evil. There are others on the website. I”m concerned about this country and the evil that has been set loose. I’m also re-thinking my participation on Facebook. Do you have any thoughts on that subject? Marianna Bailey > Begin forwarded message: > > From: "Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox" <Team(a)DailyMeditationsWithMatthewFox.Org> > Subject: [DailyMeditations] 2/4/20: Moving Beyond Evil: Wisdom from Howard Thurman > Date: February 4, 2020 at 3:32:37 AM EST > To: "Marianna Bailey" <wmbailey(a)charter.net> > > View this post on our website <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > > The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers > > Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox > > Moving Beyond Evil: Wisdom from Howard Thurman > > Meditation #268, February 4, 2020 > Transforming Evil <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > For two weeks or so—interrupted by several meditations on generosity—we have been meditating on Evil. That is an important meditation for Evil is possible wherever humans gather. Evil is often in the air like a wind that brings chaos with it. > It takes self-criticism and criticism of one’s institutions including government and media, religion and the legal world, agriculture and art, to begin to stand up to Evil. > > Indeed, Evil is smart and loves to attach itself to power places and to do so subtly as long as possible, hiding from plain sight. Evil happens. And it can happen anew with each generation if we are not vigilant. > > Self-Reflection of woman in mirror. Photo by Brad Lloyd <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…>on Unsplash <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > The lessons to learn from Hitler and his cult are many. His followers were completely subservient to him. Whatever he said or did or wanted to do was fine with him—he gave the marching orders and his followers cravenly followed. Cowardice reigned—courage went out the door. Fear took over souls and society alike. Resentment reigned. > > Violent riot police retaliate against protestors. Photo by Spenser <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> on Unsplash <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…>. > Hitler’s followers were not just everyday citizens responding to promises of a better life but government officials, judicial pooh bahs, university professors, fellow politicians, media experts, business men and industrialists who abandoned all conscience to participate in his cult. > One person described such a movement as a cult of persons “hopelessly addicted to power.” Yes, power was everything so it took precedence over everything else. Truly an idolatrous goings on. Power was god and Hitler cultists worshipped at the feet of the fuhrer who could do no wrong. > One fights evil with all that one has at one’s disposal. This includes moral outrage and the energy that accompanies such outrage—the energy to resist and to gather allies and to strategize and to interfere with lies and resentments that are being preached. > > Young Adult eco-justice activists protesting on behalf of the planet.Photo by Callum Shaw on Unsplash. > We do not want to spend too much time in the room with evil. We do not want to give it all the headlines. Evil is itself narcissistic and wants the spotlight so we want to resist giving it all it wants. > > Scanned: November 17, 2005 Howard Thurman Dean Thurman @ Marsh Chapel March 6, 1959 Historical. Photo originally posted to Boston University’s School of Theology, Howard Thurman Papers Project <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…>. > We want to meditate on—and execute—ways out of evil. We have done this frequently in our Meditations by sharing stories about people and movements who have demonstrated the courage and vision to bring good into the world. Among those people and movements are the mystics. > Consider Howard Thurman, for example, who was so instrumental as a visionary behind the civil right movement. Among his profound questions is the following: > Precisely what does it mean to experience oneself as a human being? In the first place, it means that the individual must have a sense of kinship to life that transcends and goes beyond the immediate kinship of family or the organized kinship that binds him ethnically or racially or nationally. > See Matthew Fox, “Hitler as a Religious Figure,” in Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, pp.389-398. > > See Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations, p. 210. > > Banner Image: Scene from Selma movie, re-enacting the March on Washington. Photo by History in HD <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> on Unsplash <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > To view Matthew's video, please click the image. You will be taken to today's post on the Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox website, where you can see the meditation in a larger version and also view Comments from meditation participants and answers to questions that are posed. In this way a kind of community is developing around the DM. > If you can't reach Matthew's video on the website, try his YouTube channel here. <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > Queries for Contemplation > > Hitler’s movement is often called a cult. Do you recognize in our world today movements that are also cult-like and made up of people “hopelessly addicted to power”? > > Howard Thurman’s question is a big one and puts struggle into a larger context: What does it mean to experience oneself as a human being? What is a human being? > Recommended Reading > Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > > Fox makes the point that religion has so often oversold the concept of “sin” that it has left us without language or power to combat evil. Through comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them. > > > > Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > > The 365 writings in Christian Mystics represent a wide-ranging sampling of these readings for modern-day seekers of all faiths — or no faith. The visionaries quoted range from Julian of Norwich to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Thomas Merton to Dorothee Soelle and Thomas Berry. > > Responses are welcomed. To add your comment, please click HERE <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> to go to our website. > > Upcoming Events > > Lecture: The Tao of Thomas Aquinas <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…>- Kensington, CA, Sunday, February 16, 2020 > > For more of Matthew Fox's events, see his Calendar <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…>. > > > Newly Launched! > > Global Ministries University and Matthew Fox invite you > > to rediscover a Sense of the Sacred with the > > Certificate Program on Leadership and the Creation Spirituality Tradition > > Learn more HERE <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…>; for more information, email info(a)globalministriesuniversity.org <mailto:info@globalministriesuniversity.org>. > > FOLLOW MATTHEW FOX: > Twitter <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > Instagram > <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox is made possible through the generosity of donors. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…>. Thank you! > > > Did you receive this email from a friend? You can subscribe to our daily meditations via the opt-in box on the sidebar at DailyMeditationsWithMatthewFox.org <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > <https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/lt.php?s=2e2280795897875…> > Sent to: wmbailey(a)charter.net <mailto:wmbailey@charter.net> > > Unsubscribe <http://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.acemlna.com/proc.php?nl=1&c=357&m=368…> > > Matthew Fox Legacy Project, PO BOX 424533, San Francisco, CA 94142, United States > >

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Global Buzz
by ICA International 06 Feb '20

06 Feb '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: February 2020 or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/7dayreport-20/2020-02-01.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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2/06/20, Progressing Spirit: Skylar Wilson: Holding Space for Spiritual Transformation; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 06 Feb '20

06 Feb '20

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.yiv2221274015mcnTextContent, #yiv2221274015 #yiv2221274015templateHeader .yiv2221274015mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv2221274015 #yiv2221274015templateBody .yiv2221274015mcnTextContent, #yiv2221274015 #yiv2221274015templateBody .yiv2221274015mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv2221274015 #yiv2221274015templateFooter .yiv2221274015mcnTextContent, #yiv2221274015 #yiv2221274015templateFooter .yiv2221274015mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Holding Space for Spiritual Transformation | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Skylar Wilson February 6, 2020 “New personality types are created during social and spiritual crises of religious, political, or economic origin.” ~Otto Rank One hundred years ago, as the world was shaking under the pressures of the First World War, a spiritual crisis like no other in our human history, the field of Depth Psychology was born. Along with it, a more nuanced understanding of the human psyche and how it connects to the cosmos. As Otto Rank (one of Freud’s long-time colleagues) described above, new ways of being human were born within these fires of crisis when the ground of our world was shaking. We are again in such a time of ecological, political, economic, and cultural crisis and transformation. It’s time to get humble, to listen and to show up in an unprecedented effort to reinvent ourselves from the ground up. It’s time for a new archetype to be acknowledged, uplifted, and integrated into the fabric of our public discourse. This archetype is called the spaceholder. The idea of holding space has made it into much of mainstream psychology and spiritual practice. It is the simple art of listening and receiving a person or a group in a loving, non-judgemental, empathetic way. But what does it mean to hold space as an archetype with a cosmological perspective? Spaceholding refers to the act of being present, together as a community, and individually, to a vision: that we are profoundly connected relationally within the web of life. Spaceholding means being present to our togetherness. Present to our differences. Present to the more-than-human world. Present to the space that’s created within us when we come together, in a circle, around a fire or a table or an altar to listen and to invite the Great Mystery into our lives even more deeply.This practice is incredibly simple and yet full of wisdom and complexity. Spaceholding is perhaps the single most important spiritual act because it addresses the multidimensional challenges of our times without trying to muscle about changes from the same structures of thinking that created the problems in the first place. As our culture continues to unravel and change, it is essential to have a form of phenomenological practice in which to center, recenter, and be together now, in community, without dogma, from the essence of our humanness. The spaceholder is an archetype that is now needed more than the archetype of the “hero” or the “messiah,” or the “champion.” No individual is going to come save us. The spaceholder recognizes this and thus takes responsibility for her response to the suffering of the world, making full use of the opportunities to create more space for love and freedom to emerge. The spaceholder doesn’t need to pull himself up by the bootstraps because he knows he is already supported by life completely. Spaceholders are healers who hold space, rather than use their own energy, for the potential that is innate within every being to become activated and engaged. They do this by paying attention, mirroring what they see and feel, by applying pressure where it’s needed, and supporting the places that need to soften. Spaceholders are the hospice workers and cultural midwives who open their hearts to what’s now dying and to what’s being born.The spaceholder requires an integration of masculine strength, the ability to hold steady, with what are often thought of as the feminine abilities to receive, collaborate, communicate, and shapeshift. The spaceholder does only what’s needed, and nothing more. The spaceholder trusts life to do the work, releasing control in order to move to a much vaster cadence: the Cosmic Christ (a term I borrow from teacher and friend Matthew Fox), Buddha Nature, that spark of conscious creativity that created everything and is within all things. The spaceholder is the exact opposite, and a play on, a Placeholder. A Placeholder is a person or thing standing in the place of another person or thing - just the way our personalities and egos have the habit of standing in the way of our divine nature and limitless potential. Matthew Fox describes in his book The Coming of the Cosmic Christ how “Christ” is a verb rather than a noun. It is a way of being in-touch. It awakens mindfulness, “...which instructs persons in their need and right to experience the presence of divinity around and through them.” When we hold space for the “pattern that connects” within the intelligent shape of a circle, sphere, or membrane we are utilizing the shape in which the Earth herself embodies divinity while creating cells and the rest of complex life. We can also learn to concentrate and build the attention and energy needed for our own transformation and the transformation of our communities. Similar to the way a membrane holds each of the parts of a cell as they engage in their autonomous functions, spaceholding is a way of allowing each part of oneself to be held within a container of radical acceptance and trust. This trust comes from the knowledge that our true nature is profoundly good. We are designed according to life’s intelligence and have the power to heal ourselves through accessing the river of biological and cultural evolution that’s moving through us as it expands. When we give voice to these unloved parts of ourselves, they can each be heard, honored and welcomed into a larger conversation at the table of wisdom and wholeness. I am referring to the practice from the field of Depth Psychology of depathologizing the less-than-desirable aspects of ourselves and one another. Noticing and accepting rather than judging. For example, allowing our inner child to play or to cry especially when it seems pointless or stupid. We aren’t going to get out of our own way and we aren’t going to make the deep changes needed culturally unless we have practices for holding space for more vulnerable ways of being to emerge from every dark corner of ourselves, and one another. Perhaps the word Space itself gives us insight into how we might practice being spaceholders, for Space, at least in the English language, is an utterly paradoxical concept. It refers to both a specific spot in place or time, as in the space between two trees, or between two breaths. While at the same time it refers to the endless expanse of the mysterious cosmos, and nothingness itself. Space is not a thing in itself, but the unnameable, unknowable, invisible force that gives shape and meaning to everything it surrounds. A lot like God. A lot like the potential for human beings on our spiritual evolutionary course. To be a spaceholder means to accept the paradox of being an unlimited divine being in a limited human body. It means accepting that this paradox exists in every other being, and holding space for the traumas, the hurts, as well as the messy mistakes and imperfections that come along with this paradox too. These dire times are calling on us to find new ways of being human. The spaceholder is a personality that is not only being created as a cause of the social, political, religious and environmental crises of our times, it is the personality, if embodied in more of us than not, that will create the solutions that are now beyond our imaginations. When we learn to embody the receptivity of the spaceholder - all things become possible. When we evolve beyond the archetypes of the conquistadors, the colonizers, the heroes, all of that busy doing, controlling, producing and amassing, and take on the more present role of holding the space that is setting the stage for our transformation, then we see that the new story we are trying to birth is already growing within us and is ready to be born. ~ Skylar Wilson Read online here About the Author Skylar Wilson, MA is the founder of Wild Awakenings, a conscious community of changemakers 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. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By A Reader If I am a spiritual being having an earthly experience, how do I stay connected to my spirituality during these chaotic and changing times? A: By Matthew Fox Dear Reader,One stays close to one’s spirituality during chaotic times first by staying connected to one’s body. And therefore the earth and the cosmos. It is very important to put things into context and the context for our existence is not the chaos and even evil that is swirling about us. The context is that we are here. Where? Here in the universe of 13.8 billion years that is expanding and is two trillion galaxies large each with hundreds of billions of stars. That is the context, that is our home, that is the womb in which we swim, move, have our being. Draw on that, as the psalmist says “look up to the mountains” and to the stars and to the vast universe that has invited us here, prepared the table so to speak. This puts everything else—including human folly—into context. The bottom line is that we are here—“existence is a miracle” says the poet Rilke. Drink in that miracle. It is not so hard a thing to do. Every bite of food we eat and drink is a cosmic event, it all has a 13.8 billion year history. It is sacred, this eating and this breathing and this existing. It is all a Eucharist of the Cosmic Christ or Buddha Nature or Image of God. A Thank You therefore. It is by drinking in gratitude for existence and the awe of it all that we are grounded—grounded in gratitude which is why Meister Eckhart teaches: “If the only prayer you say in your whole life is ‘Thank You’ that would suffice.” Grounding yourself in the Via Positiva is the starting point for the journey. This includes appreciating your existence and your body (which actually carries the history of the universe within it). So exercise. Walk or run or swim or do yoga or…use your body while you can. Reflect on the miracle of it all (“miracle” meaning "marvel" or “wonder”). Ground yourself therefore in the Earth. Let Earth speak to you and all her creatures, trees and grass and garden and plants and of course animals. They have plenty to say at this time. Enter into your moral outrage at indifference or lies or violence or folly. But steer it, use it as a fuel, not for venting but for feeding your imagination and strength to help transform self and others and our institutions which are dying from being married to a modern era when we are living in a post-modern era. Call on the wisdom of the ancestors, especially pre-modern wisdom, where the human does not come first, but the cosmos and the earth come first. Of course this means praying to the premodern mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen and Meister Eckhart, Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas as well as Jesus and the entire Wisdom tradition of Israel. Learn from other spiritual traditions too, all of which are pre-modern in their origins and consciousness. The Tao te Ching, the Vedas and Upanishads, Buddhist teachings, indigenous wisdom and practices are all rich with wisdom. Prefer wisdom over knowledge. Dance and paint and laugh and cook and make friendship a value and marry love making to mysticism. And enter the fray justice demands of our time whether about racism or sexism or economic imbalance, and of course the issue of Climate Change and the Extinction of species calling us. Listen to that call. What can you contribute? Who are your allies with whom you can link up to be agents of transformation in your community, in your place of work or profession, in your citizenship? Find them. What talents and creative visions do you bring to the battle? (And it is a battle and you need to develop your spiritual warrior for times like ours.) Be generous. Be courageous. Laugh a lot. Pursue truth. Eschew lies and falsehoods. In short, practice the four paths of creation spirituality—the via positiva (awe and joy and gratitude); the via negativa (silence and also grieving); the via creative (creativity); and the via transformative (justice and compassion and celebration). Ground yourself there and you will have deep roots and you will bend and bow in the winds of the wildness of our days but you will also grow and give back and will not break. I have tried to speak to these issues of surviving in our troubled times in my free dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org. This week for example I am dealing with the issue of evil.~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 35 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 74 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship (called The Cosmic Mass). His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society; A Way To God: Thomas Merton's Creation Spirituality Journey; Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times; Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times; Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest; Stations of the Cosmic Christ; Order of the Sacred Earth; and Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Name for God...Including the Unnameable God. | | | | | | | | 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 XVII: Hosea The Prophet Who Changed God's Name to Love Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong December 4, 2008Hosea is probably my favorite of all the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. His story is so real and so compelling and his expansion of the meaning of God was so closely tied to his personal domestic situation as to make his witness unforgettable. The story line is not always clear in the text, but the facts, as we piece them together from this book, are that Hosea and his wife Gomer had three sons to whom they gave strange names: Jezreel, Not Pitied, and Not My People. There is some suggestion that Hosea had actually married a prostitute, but I think the data is much more substantial that his wife later became a prostitute and ultimately a slave. We know that Hosea purchased her at a slave market for fifteen pieces of silver and restored her to the place of honor in their home as his wife. It was out of this experience that Hosea came to a new understanding of the unbounded love of God. With these few details, which are all that we can glean from the text, I have let my imagination run to come up with the following story through which I can communicate the powerful message of this book. “Tongues must have wagged in Jewish social circles when the staid and respected holy man Hosea married Gomer, the party-loving youngest daughter of the old merchant Diblaim. Gomer was known for her dark and flashing eyes and her dancing feet. The tongue wagging was also driven by the fact that Hosea was an older and settled man while Gomer was much younger, one who loved the pace of the social scene and was thought of as overtly flirtatious. People wondered if such a union would last. Hosea, however, was obviously proud of his beautiful young bride and he vowed to do all he could to make her happy. “At first, things went well. Hosea seemed to find a whole new lease on life as he accompanied his wife to countless events where he basked in her popularity. The social pace, however, did not slacken after a year or so and Hosea began to yearn for the somewhat quieter life he had known before his marriage. Almost inevitably these realities brought tension into the relationship. From time to time Hosea wanted to leave a party sooner than Gomer, so a compromise was arranged by which he departed earlier and she was escorted home later by their friends. That tactic, though dangerous in that society, seemed to work well. When Hosea finally got to the place where he did not want to go out as often, a much more dangerous compromise was instituted. Gomer occasionally went to a party either with her friends or finally alone. Over the years these occasions increased until they became the rule not the exception. An unescorted woman was almost unknown in Jewish society for it left her vulnerable and unprotected. This was especially so when that woman was by nature a sensuous and fun-loving person like Gomer. “Almost inevitably, the fears and suspicions were fulfilled and the night finally came when Gomer did not return home at all. Alarmed, Hosea immediately began to search for her, but to no avail. She vanished without a trace or clue. “While Hosea continued to search for her, Gomer, now unburdened by her more sedate husband, became the favorite plaything of the Jewish jet set. She rode this track until it stretched into years. Hosea, his love for her undiminished, continued to search while Gomer continued to play. Life in the fast lane, however, fades for everyone sooner or later and as the years passed, Gomer was no exception. Yesterday’s favorite plaything can always be replaced with tomorrow’s younger models. Youthful beauty also does not last forever. Even Gomer had begun to notice that “crows’ feet” were appearing around her eyes that cosmetics could not disguise. Next she recognized that she was sagging in places she had never sagged before. Inevitably, she had begun that fateful descent of the femme fatale. Once the favorite plaything of the social pacesetters, she soon had to adjust to being the plaything of anyone who wanted a plaything. When even that activity had run its course, she became a common prostitute, selling what remained of her charms for enough money to survive. Even prostitution, however, is a competitive profession and the day came when those seeking her services were no longer attracted at all. Gomer then descended to the final rung on the social ladder, becoming a slave and offering her labor to the family that owned her in exchange for sustenance. “Through all these downward spiraling years, Hosea kept up his search for the woman he had married and still loved. As the years passed, the search became less frantic, but it was always on his agenda. Hosea knew the ways of his world, so, after some years had passed, he limited his search to the slave markets, which were only places that seemed to be her likely destination. His was a lonely life. He knew not whether his wife was dead or alive. “Then one day it happened. He found a slave market, where the usual riff-raff of society offered loud commentary on the human cargo placed on the block. Hosea moved into the crowd just about the time a woman was placed on the block for public inspection. Her hair was matted, her eyes were bloodshot and her face was lined, revealing the toll that the years had taken. The crowd was delirious in its derision, suggesting by their shouts that no one would be so foolish as to pay anything for this old bag. The slave master tried to ignore them while he sought in vain to secure a purchaser. Their guffaws, however, were not silenced until Hosea, recognizing this woman as his wife Gomer, stepped forward and with a clear and audible voice bid fifteen pieces of silver for her. A momentary stunned silence greeted this bid while the crowd turned to see who had made this incredibly stupid offer. Fifteen pieces of silver was the top price that young, strong male servants would bring. Only someone significantly naïve or totally uninformed could have offered so absurd a price for this battered piece of cargo. The crowd’s abusive shouts now shifted quickly from this pathetic woman, who was little more than a throw-in on another sale, to the strange man who had made such an incredible offer. This bidder had been duped, so they hurled their insults at him, profoundly unaware of the drama being acted out before their eyes. “Taking no notice of their catcalls, Hosea walked forward, paid the offered price, took the woman by the hand and led her past the mocking bystanders until their words faded in the distance. When he reached his home with her, Hosea informed his household that Gomer was not a slave, but his wife and he installed her into the place of honor she had once occupied as the mistress of his household and the center of his affection. “It was following this experience that Hosea began to reflect on his life and on what it meant to be God’s prophet. His relationship with Gomer led him to examine what he perceived to be God’s relationship to the Jewish people. His thoughts about God began to intertwine with his thoughts about Gomer. Just as he loved Gomer regardless of her actions, so he began to understand that this is the nature of God’s love for God’s people. God’s love is not conditional, nor is it tempered by Israel’s actions. This definition of God began to grow in Hosea. The love of God was not an entity to be earned, it was a reality to be entered, something to be lived. His meditation, born in his own pain, paved the way for him to arrive at a new understanding of what divine love really meant. God’s love cannot be earned and God’s love cannot be destroyed no matter what people did. This was the message of Hosea. “Later in Jewish history, this message of Hosea was seen in Jesus of Nazareth. When the gospels were written that understanding of love permeated every verse. Jesus was portrayed as praying for his tormentors and giving his life and love away even as people thought they were taking it from him. The message of Jesus that the gospels sought to convey was very clear: There is nothing you or I can ever do; nothing you or I can ever be that will separate us from the love of God. As I read this small book, Hosea reaches out to love and even to rescue his wife from the consequences of her own decisions, though by the standards of that day, she would have been judged as not worthy of such a response. That was the message of Jesus 800 years later.” Now, let me quickly say that even in this reconstruction of Hosea, we do not know the whole story. A marital relationship is never one sided. In the biblical text, we do not have access to Gomer’s side of the relationship. Hosea may have been an impossibly righteous man. We do know, however, that selfless love is always a doorway into transforming forgiveness, expanded life and perhaps even a larger consciousness. We also know that the idea of God being defined as selfless love brought a whole new dimension to the meaning of worship. After Hosea lived through this experience and found reconciliation, he still had to write his story and someone somewhere had to make the later decision to incorporate that writing into the sacred scriptures of the Jewish people. That is what enabled Hosea’s message to reverberate through the ages. Later generations of people listening to the words of Hosea would begin to hear in them the “word of God.” I treasure Hosea for many reasons. His message is real and it counters the anti-Semitic Christian rhetoric of the ages that suggests that the Old Testament portrays a God of judgment while the New Testament portrays a God of love. Judgment is nowhere as severe in the Bible as it is in the New Testament Book of Revelation, which portrays eternal fire and flaming pits as the eternal fate that God has designed for sinners; and love is nowhere portrayed more profoundly than in the Old Testament Book of Hosea, who turned his personal pain into a new understanding of the limitless love of God. God does not change over the course of time, but the human perception of God is ever changing and in the Book of Hosea a new breakthrough into the meaning of God was achieved.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements John Dominic Crossan: The Challenge of Paul Workshop February 15, 2020 - Tampa, Florida Drawing from his landmark video teaching series, The Challenge of Paul, Dr. Crossan exhibits several teaching segments that illustrate major themes in Paul’s revolutionary vision: Baptism as New Creation, The Romanization of a Radical and Those Who Have Slept. Followed by open discussion and Q&A, there is no cost to attend this workshop, and 100 places are available. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Reflections on service, life, and death
by Robertson Work 04 Feb '20

04 Feb '20

Dear colleagues, I would like to share with you some of my reflections on, among other things, old age, sickness, and death, and would look forward to learn of your own thoughts. My just-published autobiography includes reflections on the death of my wife Mary after our 35 years together, and the deaths of my parents, and parents-in-law. Each one has its own meaning and lessons. Click below: http://www.lulu.com/shop/robertson-work/serving-people-planet-in-mystery-lo… [http://static.lulu.com/browse/product_thumbnail.php?productId=24385686&reso…]<http://www.lulu.com/shop/robertson-work/serving-people-planet-in-mystery-lo…> Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love and Gratitude by Robertson Work (Paperback) - Lulu<http://www.lulu.com/shop/robertson-work/serving-people-planet-in-mystery-lo…> Buy Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love and Gratitude by Robertson Work (Paperback) online at Lulu. Visit the Lulu Marketplace for product details, ratings, and reviews. www.lulu.com The book is also full of stories of global service to the "least, the lost, and the last" and to Those Who Care, when I was with the EI/ICA, UNDP, and NYU, and shares some of my reflections on commitment, joy, and sorrow, as I try to be of service to people and planet. It also contains my vision of what is needed at this critical moment in history and how we can participate in bending history. For the next four days, there is a 40% discount offered on Lulu Publishing. Please click on the URL box above to be taken there. I look forward to hear from you. In mystery, love, and gratitude, Rob ................................................................................................ New book (2020): Serving People & Planet: In Mystery, Love, and Gratitude https://www.amazon.com/dp/1684716160<https://www.amazon.com/Serving-People-Planet-Mystery-Gratitude/dp/1684716160> Previous book (2017): A Compassionate Civilization: The Urgency of Sustainable Development and Mindful Activism https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546972617 Blog: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/<https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/><https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/> LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsonwork/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/compassionatecivilization/

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Message About the Passing of Neva (Forbes) Reece.
by Carol Crow 04 Feb '20

04 Feb '20

Dear OE Friends, Neva and I were colleagues from Lincoln, NE, and spent many hours together with others of you in ICA work there. I had lost track of Neva and am sad to hear of her passing. If any of you have contact with her children, please extend my sympathies to Leslie and her sons. She was a woman of great passion, and will be missed. In care, Carol Kucera Crow

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Neva (Forbes) Reece
by Shelley Hahn 01 Feb '20

01 Feb '20

Leslie Forbes asked if I would share with you that her mother, Neva Reece (who we knew as Neva Forbes), just passed away this evening. I will share more information as it's available. Fond regards, Shelley Hahn

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Invitation: Last Chapter Learning Community
by Richard Alton 31 Jan '20

31 Jan '20

For those who indicated interest after my witness, we are officially launching the Last Chapter Learning Community, and a few other ways to engage on the topic of death. Please find all three ways to engage <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d1BU3O6CXdYsGsjtwHDXyoxSeZgK5ES3BSmJF2L…>and the sign up for the learning community here: bit.ly/thelastchapterica Looking forward to learning with you all! Pam Bergdall, Dick Alton, and Seva Gandhi -- Richard H. T. Alton One Earth Film Fest ( OEFF) Green Community Connections Interfaith Green Network T: 773.344.7172 richard.alton(a)gmail.com **Save the Date! One Earth Film Festival 2019, March 1-10* http:www.oneearthfilmfestival.org Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2

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1/30/20, Progressing Spirit: Matthew Fox: Progressive Christianity, Earth Survival and the Wisdom of Thomas Aquinas; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 30 Jan '20

30 Jan '20

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}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 h3{ font-size:18px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 h4{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 .yiv9482967504mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templatePreheader{ display:block !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templatePreheader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templatePreheader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateHeader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateHeader .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateBody .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateBody .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media only screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateFooter .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent, #yiv9482967504 #yiv9482967504templateFooter .yiv9482967504mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } Thomas Aquinas offers a grounded and substantive spirituality that is Earth based | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Progressive Christianity, Earth Survival and the Wisdom of Thomas Aquinas | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox January 30, 2020Many people, if they hear the name Thomas Aquinas at all, may not feel that he has anything to say to today’s “progressive” religious and post-religious movement. They would be wrong; dead wrong. For one reason, post-modern times require pre-modern wisdom. The modern era was useful for many things but no one could accuse it of having, for example, put forth wisdom to match the knowledge that it championed. We are short on wisdom; we are afraid of the mystics; we are beginning to acknowledge that the indigenous peoples and other pre-modern peoples have much to teach us at this time. The deepest thinkers of the middle ages (also pre-modern) have copious wisdom to teach us and Aquinas stands tallest among them all. First of these is our moving from our modern enrapture with ourselves—our anthropocentrism (what Pope Francis accurately calls our “narcissism”) is killing the Earth as we know it. Not so the medieval consciousness that began, not with us, but with the universe as do all indigenous peoples. Said Aquinas: “The most excellent thing in the universe is not the human but the universe itself.” Endorsing cosmology he also said: “The greatest thing about the human person is that we are capable of the universe.” Consider how cosmology and ecology are related in Thomas Berry’s observation that “ecology is functional cosmology.” Thomas Aquinas offers a grounded and substantive spirituality that is Earth based and that holds the power to rattle our personal and collective cages and wake us up in this critical decade that faces us. Whether we call it Extinction Rebellion or Climate Emergency or Apocalypse, whatever nomenclature we assign to it, there is no question that the next decade is going to be demanding of us all, a time for “all hands on deck” and all hearts and minds also. Earth is undergoing an extinction spasm that is unprecedented since sixty-five billion years ago when the dinosaurs (and many other species) went extinct. Vast migrations to escape rising seas and floods and drought-filled areas are sure to follow - unless we respond generously to change our ways in the next ten years. We who now live in a post-modern world may boast of the accomplishments in the modern era that included the printing press, liberal distribution of the Scriptures and other written materials, liberal democracies, the more recent revolution of social media and internet; critical biblical exegesis that is able to tell us what were the true words of Jesus in the Gospels and what words have been put into his mouth by the larger community, etc. We can brag about the advances of science and knowledge of the cosmos and our bodies and minds and the rest. All that is to the good. And Aquinas, who spent his entire life bringing science and religion together, would rejoice. His life-long effort to bring Aristotle, the “new” scientist of his day being furiously translated into Latin by Muslim scribes, was not met with clapping and rejoicing, but with scowls and eventually (shortly after his death) three very public condemnations by bishops in Oxford and Paris. His was a risky endeavor for Aristotle had three strikes against him: 1. He was a scientist—and “Who needs science?” exclaimed the fundamentalists of his day (as ours). “We have all the answers in our Bible book” (and all the questions too apparently). 2. He was a “pagan.” 3. He came by way of Islam But Aquinas stood up and took the heat. “A mistake about creation results in a mistake about God” said he—and this was 800 years before the religious homophobes of our day turn their back on scientific conclusions about homosexuality established in the 1970’s. As for being a “pagan,” Aquinas said that “all truth—whoever utters it—comes from the holy Spirit” and that “pagans possessed genuine virtues” and that all cultures have their prophets. Scientists are surely included in the “all truth” reference and the truths they uncover are also born of the Holy Spirit. As for Islam, Aquinas knew theirs was a superior culture in his day to the Christian West. After all, the invention of the University was their idea and Aquinas was awakened as a sixteen year old on visiting the University of Naples. There he discovered Aristotle as well as the new upstart Dominican Order that his mother found so radical that she had his brothers kidnap Thomas when she learned that he wanted to join them. Aquinas spent valuable years teaching at the mother of the Universities, the University of Paris which, we should remember, grounded its theology in the Scriptures. Aquinas was very adept at employing the scholastic methodology which also came from Islam and was considered so radical because it sought objective answers in preference to simply quoting figures from the past. In my major book on Aquinas, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, that I published twenty-six years ago and that is appearing from a new publisher in May, 2020, I translated many of Aquinas’ works that have never before been in English, French, German or Italian, and especially his Biblical commentaries where he is often at his freest and most creative. I employ many of those translations in my current book, The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times. Each chapter title in this new book is a sentence from Aquinas’ teaching. Following are a few of them, provocative, demanding and capable of turning a culture upside down and inside out: The experience of God must not be restricted to the few or to the old. ’They shall get drunk on the beauty of thy house,’ i.e. the Universe. Revelation comes in two volumes: Nature and the Bible. Sheer Joy is God’s and this demands companionship. Joy is the human’s noblest act. Religion is supreme thankfulness or gratitude. The first and primary meaning of salvation is this: To preserve things in the good. The same Spirit who hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation hovers over the mind of the artist at work. We ought to cherish the body and celebrate the wonderful communion of body and soul. Every truth without exception--and whoever may utter it—is from the Holy Spirit. Revelation has been made to many pagans. We are united to God as to One Unknown. The greatest accomplishment of the human mind is to know that it does not know who God is. It is a great thing to do miracles. But it is a greater thing to live virtuously. The proper objects of the heart are truth and justice. The vision of God is arrived at through Justice. Compassion is the fire that Jesus came to set on the earth. A trustworthy person is angry at the right people, for the right reasons, expresses it in the appropriate manner and for an appropriate length of time. There is a double Resurrection. God is a fountain of total Beauty, the most beautiful and the super beautiful. Christ is a dew for cooling; rain for making fruitful; a seed for bringing forth the fruit of justice.” My primary audience for this book is the younger generation—those who face a coming decade that will be filled with profound challenges and demands as the seas rise, droughts increase, floods and hurricanes get more fierce and migration explodes. The young deserve a substantive spiritual grounding for the prophetic work calling them. Aquinas offers it. In this vein I invited a 26 year old activist priest, Jerry Maynard, to write the Afterword to the book. Here are some of his thoughts in response to encountering Aquinas. “Fox has revived Aquinas for our time and given him a framework that allows all of us to recognize that this message is the instrument that will give our weary world a new song of liberation. I experienced a deep sense of being affirmed while reading through this book. I realized that through the words of Aquinas, my generation (Millennials) was being granted permission (by a saint!) not only to claim our rightful place as prophets but also to wholeheartedly embrace our identities as the beloved of God. Aquinas is testifying to life expressions of many young adults all over this world who have been acting upon the inner tug of Spirit to move forward in daring to build a radically different world where justice is the foundation, elitism is no more, and tenderness is our culture. Who knew Thomas Aquinas, a medieval theologian and philosopher, was such a revolutionary! Can we also dare to dwell in our innate goodness and demand that we be treated as the beloved children of God? Our marching orders are clear and the path has been set for us. We do not have the luxury of time to allow external forces to keep us from giving birth to new realities of global justice and cosmic oneness. We must embrace the beautiful wisdom in this book and get to work!” Some reasons Aquinas is speaking to all ages today are the following: He is eager to relate science to spirituality; he is interfaith and deeply ecumenical; his insistence on non-dualism (the reason he chose Aristotle over Plato and the reason for his being condemned three times) renders him a proto-feminist (Rosemary Ruther declares that non-dualism lies at the heart of the feminist philosophy); he was a great writer about the prophetic and was himself prophetic; he was, while possessing a genius intellect, a profound mystic. These are elements we all need as we face the twenty-first century challenges that await us no matter what our religion or lack thereof.~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox Read online here About the Author Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 35 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 74 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship (called The Cosmic Mass). His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society; A Way To God: Thomas Merton's Creation Spirituality Journey; Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times; Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times; Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest; Stations of the Cosmic Christ; Order of the Sacred Earth; and Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Name for God...Including the Unnameable God | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Glenda Beliefs: So, I have come to a point in my life where I no longer have a belief in a higher power. I was raised Southern Baptist and radiated to Methodist as an adult. After reading several of Dr. Sponge’s books and essays I feel that what I had come to suspect is now true. Now I am lost, its as if there is not a Santa Claus. No being to look after me or my loved ones and perhaps no afterlife either. It’s not as if I am crushed but is it weird that I am still seeking “something”?. What now? On the other hand, there is relief that there is not a God that only favors some, all the contradicting rhetoric in the Bible now doesn’t have to make sense to me. Please help. A: By Rev. Matthew Syrdal Dear Glenda,As a soul guide and human development coach I work with people of many different experiences and backgrounds. From my training and perspective I am hearing someone who is undergoing what might be called a spiritual ‘molt.’ A ‘shedding of the skin’ that no longer fits can be disorienting; and many people that tread this path describe it as being ‘lost.’ There are two primary stages of development that this lostness occurs in. The first is a deconstruction of one’s personal beliefs (theology, religion), the old paradigm and worldview no longer fits one’s experience of the world. The second is a deeper shift in one’s psychospiritual center of gravity. Here, cultural ways and often even religious beliefs are left behind in order to explore the deeper mysteries of nature and the soul. The problem is that our culture and religious institutions typically do not know how to support the journey of the Wanderer (the archetype representing a similar stage of development). There are two primary tasks of these two stages (which may or may not resonate with you). The first is to cultivate deeper personal authenticity and sense of belonging in your life. Who are you really, in relation to your family, friends, church or culture? How do you make choices in support of your new authentic way of being in the world? What relationships will you need to say goodbye to, or habits will you need to end or change, in order to support your most authentic development moving forward? The task for the other stage of faith assumes your life and relationships already reflect your authenticity, that you have cultivated a good degree of personal wholeness, and now (in the language of myth) you are ready to sever from a life oriented around culture and religion even, and the path before you might be a plunge into the mysteries of nature and the soul. Many religions including Christianity give us images and stories of this journey that are rich in the perennial wisdom tradition, but in practice it is lost on western society. You say that you are ‘not crushed’ and that you are ‘still seeking something.’ Feeling and experiencing, rather than merely thinking, are other windows of discovery, assisting us to deepen into any grief we might feel with the loss of our old identity/beliefs, and also amplify any longing we may feel that is inviting us into the unknown. There are a few ‘schools’ and ‘training programs’ out there, including my own work, that assist in the journey of individuation and psycho-spiritual growth through life stages that most churches and retreat centers aren’t designed to address. I would suggest giving yourself the permission and freedom of spiritual exploration, and finding a community that is healthy and resourced enough to assist you in your exploration. Blessings on your journey!~ Rev. Matthew Syrdal Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Matthew Syrdal M.Div., lives in the front range of Colorado with his beautiful family. Matt is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian church (USA), founder and lead guide of WilderSoul and Church of Lost Walls and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country. In his years of studying ancient Christian Rites of Initiation, world religions, anthropology, rites-of-passage and eco- psychology Matt seeks to re-wild what it means to be human. His work weaves in myth and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world in which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in the discovery of “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. Matt has been coaching, and guiding since becoming a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute and is currently training to become a soul initiation guide through the SAIP program. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together. Thank you for being a part of this community! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the Bible, Part XVI: Daniel Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong November 27, 2008History is not well served by the way the Bible is organized. For example, the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy), which seems to tell a continuous story, was actually written over a period of about five hundred years and describes events that occurred over as long a time frame as fourteen hundred years. Yet it is always read in worship as if it is a single story, which makes some of its described events little more than historical nonsense. To take another illustration, a book like Isaiah was written in three parts. The first, roughly chapters 1-39, was composed in the 8th century BCE; the second part, roughly chapters 40-55, was written some two centuries later in the late 6th century BCE; and the third, chapters 56-66, is the work of a 5th century BCE author. Yet for most of both Jewish and Christian history this book has been read as a single cohesive work, making a proper interpretation of its pages all but impossible. The same distortion of history is found in the lineup of the prophets. The four so-called major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, are placed in that order in the Bible. Yet Isaiah is written time-wise on both sides of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Daniel is in fact a work of the 2nd century BCE but, just to confuse things, purports to be written at the time of the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BCE. Someone who seeks literal truth or literal history in these pages of the Bible will be quite frustrated. When I began this series of columns on the origins of the Bible early this year, I knew that I would at some point have to make a decision on what order I would follow. I could treat the books of the Bible as they are written or I could reorganize the entire text on the basis of history and their time of writing. I decided to do both. I have thus far treated the Old Testament in the order that it appears in our printed Bible. I started with the documents behind the Torah that produced the books from Genesis to Deuteronomy, then turned to the prophetic movement, dealing with the books of Joshua through II Kings. Even there, however, to make a continuous story I had to skip over such books as Job, The Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations and even the tiny but significant book of Ruth, in order to deal with the prophets as they appear in the Bible. I will go back to these books later. When I come to the New Testament I will treat it in the order that it was written, not the order in which it appears in the Bible. This means that I will begin with Paul and then move to the gospels. That way everyone becomes confused but I think truth will be better served. The timing problem becomes most apparent this week when I reach the book of Daniel, which is a piece of mythological, allegorical writing designed to strengthen Jewish resistance to the Seleucid king, Antiochus Epiphanes, during the period of the Maccebean revolution in the 160’s BCE. This means that the book of Daniel should not time-wise even be in the Bible at all. It should be part of the Apocrypha, that group of inter-testament books that are no longer considered a constituent part of the Old Testament, at least in Protestant Christianity. It is also true that several stories that were originally additions to the book of Daniel, like “Bel and the Dragon,” the “Prayer of Azarias and the Song of the Three Young Men” and “Susanna,” were in fact taken out of Daniel and placed into the Apocrypha by later biblical editors, but the book of Daniel itself was kept in the canon of the Old Testament despite not belonging there. This act of inclusion means that the stories left in Daniel have become far better known in the Christian world than those relegated to the Apocrypha. We are generally familiar with Daniel in the Lion’s Den and with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace. Familiar phrases from Daniel have also enriched our language, like calling God “The Ancient of Days,” referring to some impending doom as “the handwriting on the wall,” a fatal weakness as possessing “feet of clay,” or taking on strong opponents as “entering the lion’s den.” It is also a fact that Daniel in the Old Testament and the book of Revelation in the New Testament are the two biblical works that are quoted most frequently by those who like to predict the end of the world. We have happily passed through many such projected dates in western history, yet predictions still come from the loony fringe of religion. I do not think they are worth much consideration. My favorite end of the world story came when I received a warning letter from a priest that the world was about to come to an end. He had a specific date and time on which he seemed sure that this would happen. He quoted a number of biblical sources, including Daniel, to prove his point. I must say that I did not begin to make preparations. A few days later I received an invitation from the wife of this priest inviting me to his 50th birthday celebration. The party was scheduled for about ten days after the end of the world. What a relief! Not even his wife believed his theory. When we turn to the content of the book of Daniel, we discover that it is divided into two primary sections. The first is a series of stories about Daniel which fills chapter 1-6. The second section is a series of visions that have played a role in the development of Christian history. The first vision has a character in it known as the “Son of Man.” It was Ezekiel who first introduced this phrase to our religious vocabulary. When Ezekiel used it, however, it was just a title by which God called Ezekiel, simply Ezekiel’s name. It designated him only as a human being. It had no divine connotations. When Jesus used that title many years later, however, it had a much more dramatic meaning. It was in fact a claim of divinity. That title had to have made quite a journey for its meaning to have been transformed that dramatically from Ezekiel to Jesus. It did, and it was in one of the visions of Daniel that it was transformed. “Son of Man” in Daniel was the name of an apocalyptic supernatural divine figure who would usher in the Kingdom of God and put an end to the persecution of the faithful. The “Son of Man” in Daniel traveled on the clouds of heaven and was given dominion, glory and kingship. All the nations of the world would serve him. His throne would be everlasting and of his kingdom there would be no end. We become aware, when we read the New Testament, that these images were attached to the Jesus story, first by Matthew in his parable of the Judgment, when the Son of Man will separate the sheep from the goats and, second, in Matthew’s account of Jesus appearing as the resurrected one to the disciples out of the sky on a mountain top in Galilee. In that narrative he came on the clouds clothed with the authority of heaven and earth to send the disciples out on a mission “to all the world.” Luke also borrows Daniel’s imagery when he told the story of Jesus’ ascension. Daniel was also a pivotal book in the Jewish development of ideas about life after death. In the last chapter of Daniel the author refers to the time at the end of the world when the great deliverance would come. “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth,” says Daniel, “shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting shame and contempt.” Reward and punishment from this time on became the major feature of life after death. Prior to the 2nd century BCE, the Jewish people spoke little about life after death. The only concept generally abroad was that of “Sheol.” Sheol was located in the “middle of the earth.” It was not a place of reward or punishment, it was simply the abode of the dead. No one looked forward to it. No one was comforted by it. Everyone who died went to it. If it was described at all, it was described as shadowy or as shades of life, ghostlike with no sense of joy. When Daniel was written, however, religious persecution against the Jews had reached horrendous proportions. The Jews were forced by their enemies to eat food they regarded as unclean. The Temple was itself polluted with the installation of the head of a swine in the “Holy of Holies,” an unclean animal in the very dwelling place of God. The Jews called it “the abomination of desolation.” Those Jews who refused to violate their religious practices were summarily executed. The book we call II Macabees, written at the same time the book of Daniel was written, tells the story of seven brothers who, along with their mother, were arrested and were compelled to eat the flesh of a swine. The oldest brother refused and his tongue was cut out. Then he was scalped and his hands and feet were chopped off. Finally, he was taken, still breathing, to a fire and burned up. With this vision still vivid, the next brother was told he should eat the flesh of the swine or suffer the same fate. He refused and was similarly disposed of. This procedure continued until all seven brothers had been murdered. Then the mother died. It is a dreadful story. That story, however, became a powerful instrument in giving birth to a new concept and a new passion among the Jews for life after death. That is what finds expression in the 12th and final chapter of Daniel. The driving theme was that without life after death for these faithful martyrs the very justice of God was at stake. If faithfulness to God is not rewarded beyond this life then God cannot be just. Then evil does in fact triumph over God. So heaven and hell became the categories of divine justice and the afterlife was employed to make fair this unfair world. The book of Daniel was pivotal in this transformation and, as such, exercised an enormous influence on the development of Christianity as the afterlife became crucial to the human sense of justice in both the crucifixion of Jesus and the later persecution of the Christians in loyalty to their Christ. The Book of Daniel is not a profound book, but one wonders what Christianity might have looked like if it had not been for this book. For me, however, to think of the afterlife as a place of reward or punishment distorts that concept completely. That, however, is the subject for a future column, perhaps a future book.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Citizen Discourse’s Conscious Culture & Active Listening Workshop SeriesIn commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s belief in the power of dialogue and the 40 Days of Peace, the Charter for Compassion is offering Citizen Discourse’s Conscious Culture & Active Listening Workshop Series, Online February 12, 19 and 26, 9 am Pacific time. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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