- OE - lists.wedgeblade.net

Another opinion from a "fake journalist"
by Milan Hamilton 20 Jul '19

20 Jul '19

Here is a link from the Oklahoms Observer: https://okobserver.org/where-we-belong/ Sent from my iPhone

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7/11/19, Progressing Spirit: Brandan Robertson: All The World A Thin Place; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 11 Jul '19

11 Jul '19

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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv6415130990 #yiv6415130990templateBody .yiv6415130990mcnTextContent, #yiv6415130990 #yiv6415130990templateBody .yiv6415130990mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv6415130990 #yiv6415130990templateFooter .yiv6415130990mcnTextContent, #yiv6415130990 #yiv6415130990templateFooter .yiv6415130990mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } An Urgent Call for Eco-Theology | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | All The World A Thin Place: An Urgent Call for Eco-Theology | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Brandan Robertson July 11, 2019 The Celtic tradition has a concept called “thin spaces”, geographical locations where the veil between heaven and earth, the world we live in and the realm of the Divine, seems to be remarkably thin. I suspect that all of us have experienced such a place at least once in our lives- maybe it was a place of pilgrimage that we journeyed to over a great distance, longing to lay our eyes on this sacred place. Perhaps we wandered into a thin place without realizing it and we were mesmerized by the power and beauty we found pulsating around us. Whatever the case, when we arrive in a thin space we, like Moses, feel like we must take off our shoes and stand in awe at the glory of the place. Also, within the Celtic tradition, and most other indigenous spiritual traditions, is a belief that has become known as panentheism, the idea that the Divine impregnates every molecule of the Universe. Every person, every plant, every buzzing bee, and every drop of water is a channel through which the Divine is manifesting its Presence. There is nowhere we can go where our Creator is not. As the Jewish Psalmist wrote, “If I ascend to heavens you are there, if I descend to the depths you are there, if I rise on the wings of the dawn, even there you will find me.” At the heart of every major religious tradition there is a call to humility and wonder at the ordinary world that we live in, because there is a recognition of the Divine in and through all things. These two concepts, thin spaces and panentheism, which were once so essential to the spiritual understanding of humanity, all but disappeared during the modern era. Those who managed to hold on to religious faith seemed to revert to a mythic belief system that saw the Divine as a personified deity outside of this world, looking down on us with judgement, and occasionally interjecting the affairs of the world at his whim. This image of God caused us to begin to long for an escape from this present world, and a desire to go to whatever physical world that God resided on. It allowed us to begin to see our world as less than sacred, and we developed a posture of consumerism towards the created world- this world was given to us to consume, to use, to dominate, and to decimate, because we would one day be leaving it behind. Since the emergence of this theistic notion of God, our planet has been assaulted and nearly destroyed, largely by ideologies that have at their core the idea that our life is intended for another world, or that we will have a second chance somewhere else. God isn’t around, but is far away, and is calling us to leave this earth to be in his presence. So, we have exploited and pillaged our planet, we have innovated and found ways to make ourselves more powerful, elevating humanity to a God-like status, able to control, manipulate, and transform the elements for our own hedonistic desires. We desired full dominion over every aspect of planet earth, and by tapping in to our own divine potential, we have done quite well at establishing such dominion. The problem is the world that we are dominating, exploiting, and pillaging, as Fr. Richard Rohr often says, is the first incarnation of the Divine. Though we have placed blinders over our collective eyes, refusing to acknowledge the Divine presence in every centimeter of the created world, we none the less have been abusing and murdering God. This, of course, is not a new concept. At the heart of the Christian story is the narrative of God appearing in the form of a human being, who is grotesquely murdered at the hands of humanity who believed they knew how to see and be in the world better than the one who created it. And because God has granted us will over our lives and world, God will allow humanity to choose whatever path we desire. If we desire to crucify our Creator, the Creator will tragically allow us that choice. Since the Industrial Era we have indeed chosen to crucify our Creator. But in doing so, we are crucifying our own ability to survive. There is no life apart from the Source of Life. Every nail that we have pressed into the fragile skin of our Creator, through our unsustainable, human-centered industrial endeavors, has likewise been a nail pressed into our own collective body. Every time we have chosen to dominate and control the planet, rather than living in mutuality with it, we have been tightening the noose around our own neck, threatening to cut off our own ability to live, move, and have our being. We’ve been dashing towards the line of death with each passing century, ignoring the warnings that our Creator has been giving us through the Book of Nature. And now we’ve finally reached the threshold where we have the option to resist the consequences of our own actions. aWe can begin the long, costly process of repentance to bring healing to the world, or we can step across the finish line, ensuring our own destruction and the destruction of the world as we have known it. The situation is really, truly that dire. Astonishingly, we seem to be choosing death. The warning flares continued to be shot into the air, but instead of heeding them and making changes for our survival, we are sitting in our skyscrapers watching them as if they are fireworks, toasting to our own destruction. The most powerful and destructive nations in the world continue to choose their own pleasure and self-interest, rather than scaling back the practices and commodities they enjoy, thus saving the world. Most of us continue to walk through our days living as if destruction is just a far-off fantasy that could never actually come upon us. If there was ever a time for anxiety and panic among the masses, this is it. The Creation is breathing its last breath, it’s crying out from the cross of our own making, asking us, “Why have you forsaken me?” And we, like the centurions of old, are turning our heads and covering our ears. Many people will read this and desire to jump to the hope of resurrection. We want to grab onto an optimistic perspective that humanity will eventually wake up, or that God will somehow step in and reverse our course. But that isn’t the way the world works. I do believe that our planet will eventually heal itself and return to its full health and glory, but I believe that may very well come after humanity has become extinct. Humans have only been on the planet for a brief moment- the earth existed for billions of years before we appeared on the scene. And millions of species of living organisms have come and gone over the history of our planet. We must not allow our humanistic ideology blind us to the fact that we are but one more organism that can easily come and go in the history of this beautiful blue planet. God will be resurrected. The planet will heal. Our choice to kill and destroy the incarnation of God will only harm ourselves. Our Creator will overcome. Life will continue. But it may well continue without human involvement. That seems to be the trajectory that we are heading. How can we change course? How can we ensure our survival? I believe we must first start by returning to the wisdom of our ancestors who lived in worshipful relationship to the Created World. We must begin to acknowledge the presence of the Divine in every leaf, every ant, and every person. We must begin to live in loving, sacrificial relationship with God in Creation, allowing the world to sustain us as we seek to sustain it. We need to return to a synergistic relationship to God, giving back to the Divine Life as much as we receive. We need to begin to see all the world as a thin place, realizing that the realm of the Divine isn’t somewhere off in the cosmos, but is here on the ball of dirt and glory. The subconscious spiritual beliefs of any and every culture are an indicator of the likely actions that such a people will take. In our consumeristic, capitalistic Western culture, our subconscious beliefs tell us that we are the center and pinnacle of Creation, that our innovative capacities will continue to enable us to survive regardless of circumstances. But in the words of Jesus, these beliefs lead us down the wide road to destruction and many are walking upon it. The narrow road that leads to life calls us to challenge these subconscious beliefs, challenge the systems that we have created that pillage and exploit Creation, and be willing to point our innovative capacities towards devolving technologically and returning to simpler, more natural ways of being in the world. But again- in order for any significant change to occur, our beliefs must be changed. And it is one of the primary roles of institutions of religion to call society out of its position of complacency and into a posture of true repentance- that is, metanoia, the expanding of our minds. We must call humanity out of mythic consciousness that sees God as some Being out in the cosmos who will at last step in and save the day, and into an integrated view of Reality that sees God in our midst, around us, through us, and as us. We must, with urgency, call our communities to tear off our blinders and take a hard look at the destruction that is looming over our species, and then act in accordance to our spiritual traditions to enter into a right relationship with the Divine once again. “The End is Near” was once a catchphrase of right-wing fundamentalist preachers. Today, it must become a rallying cry for all who care about the future of humanity and the future of our planet. The end is in fact near, but we still have the opportunity to reverse our course. The end is in fact near, but a new beginning is still within the realm of possibility for humanity. One of the primary keys towards changing course and saving our world is going to come when we once again begin to locate the Divine in the midst of all that is, seen and unseen. Salvation will come when we embrace the wisdom of our Celtic spiritual forerunners who saw all the world as a thin place, who located heaven in the midst of here and now, and who saw this world and everything in it as pierced through with the Divine. May all people of faith heed these warnings, turn from our arrogance, and open our souls and lives towards a renewed kind of relationship with the Divine, in and through this sacred ball of blue and green.~ Rev. Brandan Robertson Read online here About the Author Rev. Brandan Robertson is a noted spiritual thought-leader, contemplative activist, and commentator, working at the intersections of spirituality, sexuality, and social renewal and the author of Nomad: A Spirituality For Travelling Light and writes regularly for Patheos, Beliefnet, and The Huffington Post. He has published countless articles in respected outlets such as TIME, NBC, The Washington Post, Religion News Service, and Dallas Morning News. As sought out commentator of faith, culture, and public life, he is a regular contributor to national media outlets and has been interviewed by outlets such as MSNBC, NPR, SiriusXM, TIME Magazine, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Associated Press. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By A Reader Is God a Palestinian/Brazilian/Chilean/Russian/Khazak/…woman too? A: By Christena Cleveland This question was posed in immediate response to my assertion that God is a black woman. Before we scurry on to other metaphors for the Divine, it is important to recognize how our theological imaginations have been poisoned and impeded by anti-blackness. Because we associate the Divine with whiteness and “light”, it is difficult for us to embrace God in black skin, especially God in black female skin. Black women, who exist near the bottom of the racial-gender hierarchy, are saddled with both the “foolishness/weakness of women” and “dirtiness of black people” prejudices. In fact, Malcolm X famously said, “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman.” As a result, black women are perceived as wholly unholy; unfit to represent God much less be God. God as a black woman violates our expectations. Due to our conditioning, we expect God to be white and male. Social psychology research on expectations teaches us that when we encounter someone who violates our expectations, we feel threatened. In one study[1], participants interacted with a White or Latinx partner who described their family background as either high or low in socioeconomic status (SES). The researchers’ theorized that people are conditioned to expect white people to come from high SES backgrounds and Latinx people to come from low SES backgrounds. They predicted that when participants interacted with someone who violated those expectations, they would feel threatened and experience higher cardiovascular reactivity. Indeed, their hypothesis was correct. Participants who were paired with a relatively wealthy Latinx partner or a relatively poor White partner showed much higher levels of threat and cardiovascular reactivity than those who were paired with partners who met their expectations. This social psychology insight is key to helping us dismantle the anti-black misogyny that infects our theological imaginations. For all of us who have been conditioned by anti-blackness and misogyny, the invitation is to linger with– rather than rid ourselves of- the discomfort, threat, and cardiovascular reactivity that God as a black woman might pose. ~ Christena Cleveland Read and share online here About the Author Christena Cleveland Ph.D. is a social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. She is the founder and director of the recently-launched Center for Justice + Renewal, a non-profit dedicated to helping justice advocates sharpen their understanding of the social realities that maintain injustice while also stimulating the soul’s enormous capacity to resist and transform those realities. Committed to leading both in scholarly settings and in the public square, Christena writes regularly, speaks widely, and consults with organizations. Dr. Cleveland holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara as well as an honorary doctorate from the Virginia Theological Seminary. She integrates psychology, theology, and art to stimulate our spiritual imaginations. An award-winning researcher and author, Christena has held faculty positions at several institutions of higher education — most recently at Duke University’s Divinity School, where she led a research team investigating self-compassion as a buffer to racial stress. She is currently working on her third book which examines the relationship among race, gender, and cultural perceptions of the Divine. Dr. Cleveland is based in North Carolina where she lives with her spouse, Jim. __________________________________ [1] Mendes, WB; Blascovich, J; Hunter SB; Lickel, B & Jost, JT (2007). Threatened by the unexpected: physiological responses during social interactions with expectancy-violating partners. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 698-716. | | | | | | | | 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 Fifth Fundamental: The Second Coming Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong October 31, 2007The last of the Five Fundamentals claimed by American Protestant Traditionalists as the irreducible essence of Christianity has to do with the second coming of Jesus. To modern ears it is the most bizarre of the five and is based, I believe, on a misunderstanding of the Christ experience that was later literalized. However, that misunderstanding has found a place in the gospels themselves, and so the distortion echoes through the ages. This fifth fundamental stated that Christians are required to believe that Jesus will return to the earth in a bodily form on the last day for two purposes. He will come, first to inaugurate the Kingdom of God and second to carry out the final judgment. This ancient concept involved pictorial images of Jesus coming physically out of the sky, which made sense only in a pre-Copernican world. It forces contemporary believers to affirm the literalness of a place called heaven, where great and eternal rewards are handed out and of a place called hell where great and eternal punishment must be endured. It also implies that the “Day of Judgment” has to be regarded as an event that will occur inside history at the end of time. For most modern people all of these concepts fall somewhere in between gobbledygook and complete non-sense. That is at least part of the reason why there is in our time a rush into secularism and why our modern world produces popular books espousing atheism. Yet, the fact remains that even in this generation those who predict the specific date for the second coming of Jesus still get media attention – though maybe only the kind of attention that one gives to the theater of the absurd. Occasionally, some person will actually claim that they are in fact the Jesus who will come again. The last one of these to gain major attention in the media was from Texas – enough said. Devotees of the second coming quote the Bible literally to justify their convictions. Perhaps we ought to start by looking at these biblical ideas. Apocalypticism, or concern with the end of the world, is indeed a note found first in the Hebrew Scriptures and later in Paul and the gospels. Apocalypticism appears to enter this tradition as a sign of the decline of hope among the Jewish people that their vindication would ever occur inside history. That despair was born after the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 721 B.C.E. That defeat for the Jews dispersed the citizens of the Northern Kingdom into the DNA pools of the Middle East, never to be isolated, identified or heard of again. These people are referred to today as The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.” The Assyrians also reduced the last remaining Jewish state called Judah to vassal status and inaugurated a policy of collecting tribute, which left the Jews in poverty and allowed hopelessness to become their daily bread. It was out of that hopelessness that the Jews began both to dream of God’s restoration and to envision exactly what would occur at the end of history when the Kingdom of God would be established. Apocalypticism also fed the messianic dreams of the Jews, for one aspect of the messiah who would come, was that he would reestablish the Jewish nation, restore the Jewish throne and usher in the Kingdom of God at the end of time. These hopes grew in direct proportion to the rise of Jewish despair. After vassalage to the Assyrians, the Kingdom of Judah was defeated and destroyed by the new power of the Middle East, the Babylonians. This time Judah tried to hold out against this foe, fighting a brilliant defensive battle for two years before the walls around Jerusalem were breached and the victorious Babylonians poured in. The city was laid to waste, the Temple destroyed and all the able bodied citizens were deported to exile in Babylon never to see their holy land again. Some two generations later, the Persians overran the Babylonians and let the captive people finally return to their homeland, where they discovered that the nation of Judah was little more than a rock pile and that Jerusalem was so crippled that it would never again inspire grand dreams. In that climate apocalyptic thinking thrived. Someday messiah will come, they said, and draw history to a close. Messiah will usher in the Kingdom of God, judge the people of the world and begin the time after time and beyond history when God’s will is done “on earth as in heaven.” It was not long, however, before the Persians were overrun by the Macedonians and the Jews became again a conquered province now in the empire of Alexander the Great. Upon Alexander’s death, the Jewish state became a pawn between the Syrians and the Egyptians until Rome’s might once again united that part of the world under Roman domination. So when the Jews looked at history they saw it only as an arena of their constant victimization. In response they created apocalyptic fantasies that anticipated the end of the world. In that alone they found both comfort and hope. The promised one, they said, would descend out of the sky at the end of time and usher in the new age of peace under the dominance of these oppressed people. Many definitions floated around the idea of messiah in Jewish circles. He would be the Son of David, and thus the heir to David’s throne. He would be the new Moses and the new Elijah, the Son of Man and even the Son of God. Much of the gospel material in the New Testament was designed, not to describe things Jesus actually said and did, but to attach various images to him in order to demonstrate his claim to be the messiah. They believed that when messiah came he would be recognized because the signs of the kingdom would be the marks of his life: the blind would see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and the mute sing. When Jesus was identified by his disciples as the messiah all of these images were attached to his memory. When Matthew attributed to him the parable of the Judgment in which the sheep and the goats were separated and dispatched, one to eternal life, the other to outer darkness, messianic thinking was clearly operative. Messiah would come out of the sky because that is where God lived. The “City of God” would descend out of heaven; living water would flow from above when the Kingdom dawned. All of these images assumed a three-tiered universe with heaven, the abode of God, just above the sky. Christianity’s incarnational language reflected that mentality. Jesus was the human form of God above, entering human history through a miraculous virgin birth. His life was filled with Godlike acts and people said that he was destined to return to the God above the sky through the miracle of a cosmic ascension. Those were the interpretive symbols used to tell the Christ story. Interestingly enough, however, these traditional story lines do not appear to be original to Christianity. The Virgin birth, for example, did not enter the Christian tradition until the 9th decade. Paul who wrote between 50-64 had clearly never heard of it. Neither had Mark, the first gospel, written in the early years of the 8th decade. The story of Jesus’ ascension, as something separate from the resurrection, is a 10th decade addition to the Christian story and try as we may, we find no evidence of miracles being associated with Jesus until the 8th decade. Something occurred, an experience that cannot be described, causing the disciples to identify Jesus with that promised messiah and immediately these “end of the world” images were wrapped around him, It quickly became obvious, however, that neither the life nor the death of Jesus had established the Kingdom of God. So echoes in the teaching of Jesus appeared suggesting that he would come again to complete the messianic task before “this generation has passed away.” He was called the “first fruits of the Kingdom of God.” A crisis developed in the church at Thessalonica when Jesus did not return immediately and Paul had to address this anxiety in his first Epistle to the Thessalonians. Two thousand years have now passed and the Kingdom has not yet dawned. Increasingly most people just assume that this was a misunderstanding that got incorporated into Jesus. In Luke’s gospel and in his second volume that we call the book of Acts, it begins to look like the hope for the second coming has already been replaced by the idea that the church has the universal mission to convert the world. Some have suggested that the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was really the second coming and that the church, presumably born in that Pentecost experience, was now the “Body of Christ.” That idea transforms the second coming symbol somewhat. Others have said that Christ’s second coming is in the lives of his faithful disciples, our commitment to live the Christ life. These explanations may be helpful to some but they are not to me. Neither are they to those almost to be pitied people, who fail to live now because they spend their lives getting ready to welcome Jesus in his second coming. All of the apocalyptic language, out of which talk of a second coming of Jesus arises, is mythological language expressing hope that is not bound by the pain of this world. It was never meant to be literalized. The classical fundamentalists, who wrote the Five Fundamentals of Christianity, are thus not the true interpreters of the Christ story but the ones, who by literalizing the interpretive myths have actually falsified the Christ experience so totally that 21st century people find it increasingly difficult to call themselves Christian. So our analysis of the Five Fundamentals of Christianity is now complete. Every single one of them is intellectually bankrupt in the light of modern knowledge. The Bible is not the inerrant word of God. The Virgin Birth has nothing to do with biology. The idea of substitutionary atonement is a barbaric idea that makes God an ogre, Jesus a victim and you and me the guilt-ridden causes of Jesus’ death. The resurrection of Jesus is not a physical, bodily resuscitation. The second coming is nothing more than a mythological way to express the human yearning for fulfillment. It has nothing to do with an event that might occur in time. So what is Christianity all about if none of these “fundamentals” are literally true? That will be my topic next week.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Wild Christ, Wild Earth, Wild Self A Nature-Based Introduction to Seminary of the Wild July 28 - August 2nd Ghost Ranch, New Mexico Seminary of the Wild offers an experiential, nature-based, journey of apprenticeship into the wild mysteries of the kingdom of God and an invitation into a deeper participation in the restoration of the world, tikkun olam. This gathering has been created for those who long for a more soul-infused life and who yearn to find ways to re-connect to to the natural world as a person of faith during a time of deep cultural unraveling. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Dailey Office
by Marianna Bailey 09 Jul '19

09 Jul '19

Trying to remember….was daily office at 6 am with wake up 5 am? I remember it being dark and cold when we walked to the Jet hanger in 5th City for Daily Office. Marianna Bailey

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Global Buzz for July
by ICA International 08 Jul '19

08 Jul '19

Enjoy catching up with what is happening in ICAs across the globe.... Global Buzz Report: July 2019 Click above or copy and paste this URL into your browser's address bar http://globalbuzz.icai-archives.org/7dayreport-19/2019-07-01.php And: 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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7/04/19, Progressing Spirit: Christena Cleveland: Growing Up in a White Male God’s World; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 04 Jul '19

04 Jul '19

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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9916234393 #yiv9916234393templateBody .yiv9916234393mcnTextContent, #yiv9916234393 #yiv9916234393templateBody .yiv9916234393mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9916234393 #yiv9916234393templateFooter .yiv9916234393mcnTextContent, #yiv9916234393 #yiv9916234393templateFooter .yiv9916234393mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } I began searching for other images of the Divine. | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Growing Up in a White Male God's World | | | | | | | | | | Guest Author Christena Cleveland, Ph.D. July 4, 2019 One of the first things the Church taught me is that my blackness is abhorrent. I had just finished kindergarten and my resourceful mother had signed us up for every Vacation Bible School (VBS) in a twenty-mile radius. VBS was a cost-effective alternative to daycare, so each week she dropped me and my siblings at yet another church where our black bodies were engulfed by a sea of whiteness. A precocious child, I didn’t love the soulless VBS songs -- and though it wasn’t until college that I would encounter the term theodicy, I was already beginning to question how a loving God could possibly commit global genocide by flood. But I endured VBS because my mom told me to go and I prided myself on being an obedient child. One time, as soon as our mom dropped us off at that week’s VBS, my brother John-John and I spotted a towering tetherball set. At the first recess break, John-John and I sprinted to the tetherball and got lost in a competitive game. We must have missed our teacher’s call to return to the classroom, because the next thing we heard was, “Get in here, you niggers!” We both froze. The tetherball whizzed and spiraled around the pole. As a five-year-old, I hadn’t yet acquired this new vocab word, but I instinctively understood that it was negative, and that it referred to me. I knew that my brother and I looked different from our classmates, and it didn’t take long for me to deduce that nigger was about my blackness and that it was bad. This rudimentary knowledge was enough to make me duck my head in shame as I ran toward the classroom. I understand that not all white Christians are as explicitly racist as my VBS teacher. Many are implicitly racist. Some are anti-racist revolutionaries. But what shaped my childhood reality was the absence of messages from the Church that refuted my teacher’s proclamation that my blackness is abhorrent. In fact, many of the messages I received implicitly supported her proclamation. For example, I often encountered illustrations of God as a white man that associated God’s goodness with His whiteness and maleness. As a black girl, I never saw myself in God. Consequently, it was easy for me to internalize the shame my teacher heaped on me. Additionally, much like the powerful white men whose social location was distant from mine, God felt distant from me. I’m not the only black kid to question my identity in light of the prevalence of white male god. The late Black tennis star Arthur Ashe shared about his childhood experience with white male god: “Every Sunday, Arthur Jr. had to go to church, either First Presbyterian or Westwood Baptist, where his parents had met, and where he would look up at a picture of Christ with blond hair and blue eyes and wonder if God was on his side.”[1] We don’t just encounter white male god at church. He is everywhere. For example, “In God We Trust” is printed on money next to a picture of a powerful white man. Each time we look at a dollar bill, we are implicitly reminded that God is a powerful white man. In my early adulthood, as I discovered how ubiquitous white male god is, and how much its racial-gender identity determines who is sacred and who is profane, I grew to hate white Christ. I hated it not only for its historical inaccuracy, but also for its exclusivity. I hated white Christ because its existence was a powerful social force that caused little black kids like me and Arthur Jr. to wonder whether God shared our black identities, whether God was near our black bodies, and whether God was on our side. Ideas shape everything. In fact, social psychologists believe that ideas are the scaffolding of a culture; ideas impede or propel all that is possible within a culture. White male god rules Western culture. The more a person approximates white male god’s whiteness, the more desirable and holy they are perceived to be. Indeed, in the Judeo-Christian scriptures, darkness and blackness are often equated with ugliness and filth. I hated white Christ and I was committed to dismantling its supremacy…by any means necessary. So, in 2016 when Christianity Today (CT) magazine invited me to become a monthly columnist, I saw it as an opportunity to talk to a pretty conservative Christian crowd about how Christ is not white. That year I wrote a non-shocking essay about the historical inaccuracy of white Jesus that shocked the CT readers. In response to that particular column I received about five times as much hate mail as normal and four death threats. The vitriolic response simply proved my point: that many American Christians are violently attached to the idea of a white god and are threatened by any suggestion that God is not white. The overwhelming amount of hate mail and death threats simply affirmed that white Christ is a disease that infects people with anti-blackness. Consequently, I wasn’t at all surprised when, around the same time, America failed to resist Trump’s xenophobic and racist presidential campaign. Between white America’s general lack of support for the Black Lives Matter movement and its attachment to white god, I knew that a blatant racist could easily be elected in this country. Then Trump was caught boasting about sexually assaulting white women. I remember thinking, “I know from experience that white Americans typically lallygag when black and brown people are attacked and killed. But surely, they’ll rally to protect their own white women.” But the white silence in response to white women being attacked helped me grasp that god’s whiteness isn’t the only problem. Up until this point, I had singularly focused on the problem of God’s whiteness when other problems remained, namely God’s maleness. My singular focus is easily explained. As a black woman whose existence is defined by intersectionality, I must navigate a society that is often unwilling to accommodate my blackness or my femaleness, much less both at the same time! So, I’ve often had to choose. In this case, I chose my blackness, focusing on the problem of white Christ. But once I turned my attention to the problem of God’s maleness, I realized that I didn’t just hate white Christ, I also hated male Christ. A god who is exclusively white and male, or even predominantly white and male, is never going to be safe for people of color and/or women. Indeed, white male god is intersectional; we must be liberated from both its whiteness and maleness. The idea of a white male god has ruled American culture for so long that it’s not at all surprising that the Judeo-Christian scriptures depict women as foolish and licentious, that mass incarceration disproportionately affects black and brown people, that a gender pay gap persists in the world’s most prosperous economy, that black and brown people are being shot incessantly by a largely white police force, and that men who have been accused of sexual assault sit on our Supreme Court. When the ruling idea is that the Divine is proximal to whiteness and maleness, and distant from blackness and femaleness, it follows that the culture’s institutions and humans will support anti-blackness and misogyny. As both black and female in the aftermath of Trump’s election, I consciously found myself caught in the crossfire of anti-blackness and misogyny. I also realized that due to the limitations of my Protestant background, I didn’t possess a theological imagination that ventured beyond white male god. Consequently, I began searching for other images of the Divine. I didn’t have to search far. Just beyond Protestantism, from the depths of Catholicism rose the Black Madonna, a black female image of the Divine who is claimed by Catholicism but definitely not owned by it. Within the span of a few months in 2017, I read every book I could find on Her, lingering on the images of Her. But I knew in order to truly heal from the wounds of growing up in white male god’s world, I needed to encounter Her face to face. So, in the fall of 2018, I spent five weeks in central France, walking over 400 miles to visit 18 ancient Black Madonna statues in remote villages. I’m not what anyone would call an “outdoorsy” person, but as I’ve reflected on the ways that white male god has wreaked havoc on me, I’ve become more conscious of the ways in which slavery, domestic service, devalued labor and environmental racism have antagonized black women’s sacred relationship to the earth. Though I was scared to walk so many miles, alone, and much of it across winter mountain ranges, I chose to take on the challenge of a walking pilgrimage. I wanted to experience the liberation of intentionally connecting with the earth, with my body, with the air, with the people who lived in the Black Madonna villages – and most of all with an image of the Divine who looks like me, experiences the world like me, and is beloved and holy like me. ~ Christena Cleveland, Ph.D. Read online here About the Author Christena Cleveland Ph.D. is a social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. She is the founder and director of the recently-launched Center for Justice + Renewal, a non-profit dedicated to helping justice advocates sharpen their understanding of the social realities that maintain injustice while also stimulating the soul’s enormous capacity to resist and transform those realities. Committed to leading both in scholarly settings and in the public square, Christena writes regularly, speaks widely, and consults with organizations. Dr. Cleveland holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara as well as an honorary doctorate from the Virginia Theological Seminary. She integrates psychology, theology, and art to stimulate our spiritual imaginations. An award-winning researcher and author, Christena has held faculty positions at several institutions of higher education — most recently at Duke University’s Divinity School, where she led a research team investigating self-compassion as a buffer to racial stress. She is currently working on her third book which examines the relationship among race, gender, and cultural perceptions of the Divine. Dr. Cleveland is based in North Carolina where she lives with her spouse, Jim. [1] Kenny Moore, “Sportsman of the Year: The Eternal Example,” in Sports Illustrated (December 21, 1992), 21. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Nelda If/when ego is attuned or at Oneness there is no judgement or comparison. When ego gets disconnected from Source perception shifts… then that which I like I call ‘good’ and that which I do NOT like I call ‘bad’. As the spiritual path unfolds before me if I have finally learned each experience has within it an opportunity to be drawn closer to the Source, to develop reliance and trust in that Source. My life has presented some intense faith provoking experiences. When I meet them with the anticipation of eventual blessing to be revealed, it is NOT necessary to (even though I do at times) become despondent and hopeless. A: By Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. Dear Nelda, You pack a lot into your reflections. In response, I’ll offer some distinctions you might find helpful. I would invite you to consider distinguishing the ego and the soul. By soul I mean our sense of self that is Being manifesting uniquely as you in each arising moment. You speak of the Source, and Being is the Boundless Source. You can think of the ego as your soul constricted by defenses, by armoring, by ignorance, by instincts. The ego imitates the soul, seeking the Source but unable to experience the connection, you might say, because of the boundaries it imposes to try to survive without being transformed. You also speak of “perception,” which is helpful and accurate. Since the soul is Being being you, she knows her Source. Yet it is also true that the soul needs to learn how to trust what she perceives and what she knows. For the ego, the spiritual world is often reduced to the small, moral, superegoic field bounded by “good” and “bad” or “right” and “wrong.” For the spiritual journey of the soul, the focus is the inner journey home to the truth of who she has always been but has forgotten. In a sense, the ego’s unrelenting concerns (anxiety) dulls the perception of the soul and lulls her to sleep about what truly matters: union with the Source. An essential quality within the soul is that of basic trust in the beauty and goodness of the Source. The ego cannot relax into trust because of the defenses, and so despondency and hopelessness arise. But the gift within the despondency and hopelessness is our realization that we can do nothing to acquire connection with the Source, or to gain value, or to become lovable. What we learn to do is nothing (wu wei, in Taoism), rest and relax in the arms of Being, because the Source is already the essence of our soul. This realization about the nature of reality moves the soul to engage in those spiritual practices (e.g., meditation, curious inquiry, service) that actually deepen her union with the Source without becoming lost in distracting egoic concerns about salvation or superegoic preoccupation with “good” and “bad.” ~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. Read and share online here About the Author Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of St. Paul’s Church in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including “I Have Called You Friends“, “Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms“, and “My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You” and “Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland“. Visit Kevin’s Blog: Essential Living: For The Soul’s Journey | | | | | | | | 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 Fourth Fundamental: Miracles and the Resurrection, Part V Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong October 2007 Something clearly happened to the band of Jesus’ disciples at some point following his crucifixion that was profound, life changing and deeply real. We have no written records between 30 C.E. and 50 C.E. from any source that purports to describe what that experience was. However, we can chart some dramatic changes that occurred in that time span that can only be attributed to whatever that experience was. Let me state them quickly. According to Mark, the first gospel, when Jesus was arrested, all of the disciples forsook him and fled. I read this as a literal memory since by the time Mark wrote, the Twelve were heroes, yet the memory of their abandonment was still clear. Jesus is even made to predict this abandonment and to refer to how it fulfilled the Jewish Scriptures, citing a verse from Zechariah to give that claim particular emphasis. I do not think people go to this length to justify or excuse the disciples’ behavior if that behavior had not happened. So I read this abandonment as literal history and believe that the facts suggest that Jesus died alone and that his disciples engaged in an act of unbecoming cowardice. Yet something happened to these fleeing disciples that changed them dramatically. When it happened, we do not know. The time frame of three days is clearly an interpretive and liturgical symbol to allow for the later celebration on the first day of the week which would be the third day from the crucifixion. Where it happened we do not know since in the gospels themselves there are two competing traditions. Mark, Matthew and the appendix to John argue for a Galilean setting. Luke and the regular conclusion of John argue for a Jerusalem setting. Most scholars regard the Galilean tradition as the more original, the earlier tradition, and the Jerusalem tradition as the more developed, later one. This conflict is, however, present in the gospels themselves. How did whatever the Easter experience was actually happen? We do not know that either, but by reviewing the gospel material, we can pick up hints in a variety of places. The experience of the living Jesus that later came to be called resurrection seemed to have a liturgical context. Luke has the travelers on the road to Emmaus say, “He was made known to us in the breaking of the bread.” That phrase was in obvious liturgical use when the gospels were written. John’s appendix (Chapter 21) also suggests a common meal through which Jesus made himself known. The Book of Revelation uses the word “sup” or “dine” when describing what it means to commune with the raised Christ. The narrations of the Last Supper in Mark, Matthew and Luke carry resurrection connotations of the eschatological emphasis on the new meal that will be eaten in the Kingdom of God. John’s gospel, which has no last supper, refers to the cross as the place where the bread of life is taken, blessed, broken and given, but he turns the story of the feeding of the multitude with a few loaves and fishes into a great eucharistic feast and identifies eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus with the resurrected life that will be eternal. While we can only speculate about the when, where and how questions, we can be much more specific when charting the effects. Something brought the fearful and fleeing band of disciples back together. What was it? Something empowered them with such courage that they never again wavered in regard to their vision. Indeed they were quite willing to die for it. What has the power to change cowards into heroes, to redirect the lives of a group so dramatically? Whatever Easter was it had to be big enough to do that. The second effect that is obvious is that whatever the Easter experience was it changed the disciples’ understanding of God and how Jesus was related to that understanding. When we turn to the witness of Paul, who wrote between 50-64, he says in his epistle to the Romans that “God designated Jesus to be the Son of God” by the power of the “Spirit of holiness” and this designation was made operative in that God raised him from the dead. Long before any gospel writer had turned the Easter experience into a physical, resuscitated body, Paul had interpreted it as God raising Jesus into whatever God is and whatever God means. This transformation is then written back into the life of Jesus when, in the synoptics, Peter is made to call him “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” though, as it was later indicated, it would not be until the resurrection that Peter would understand his own words. When John has Jesus identify himself as being one with God and when Thomas is made to refer to him as “My Lord and my God,” the revolution was complete. It is quite clear that what Easter did to these Jewish disciples was to force a redefinition of God onto them so that forever after they could not see God without seeing Jesus as part of that definition nor could they see Jesus any longer as other than as deeply at one with God. It would be some four hundred years before the Christian Church would define this transformation in the doctrinal language of the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity, but the experience appears to have been connected to whatever it was that originally constituted Easter. People do not redefine God except when driven to do so by an experience that is undeniable. Whatever Easter was, it has to be big enough to account for this dramatic change. The final evidence of change is a little more vague and a little more stretched out in time, but it is powerful nonetheless. Whatever that life-changing, post crucifixion experience was, it came to be connected in practice with the first day of the week. My own study of the resurrection has led me to conclude that the first day of the week was never the day of the Easter experience but was rather the liturgical day set aside to celebrate the Easter experience. My best guess is that somewhere between six months and a year actually separated the crucifixion from what came to be called the resurrection, but what I call the Easter experience to keep it more vague and less literally defined. I see evidence for this in all of the gospels, especially in John (Chapter 21), but time does not permit me to spell that out here. There is no doubt, however, that very early the disciples of Jesus observed the Sabbath in the synagogue and then gathered for “the breaking of the bread” on the first day of the week. By the time Paul wrote to the Romans, the first day of the week was so deeply established that Paul could refer to it simply as “the Lord’s Day” without any further explanation. Within a single generation, “the Lord’s Day” rivaled the Sabbath in importance even among the Jewish disciples of Jesus. This was long before Christianity became a predominantly Gentile movement. When it did move from its Jewish womb into the Greek world of the Mediterranean region, it was the Jewish Sabbath that would ultimately be dropped by the increasingly non-Jewish Christians and the first day of the week became the exclusive Christian holy day. The change that created the first day of the week as a new holy day was, however, connected to whatever the transforming Easter experience was. Something clearly happened. Change in behavior, change in theology, change in liturgical practice all occurred and all cry out for explanation. The Easter experience lies under all of the explanations. The last thing I want to note in this column is that the various explanations of the Easter experience found in the four canonical gospels, which were written 40-70 years after the transformation they purport to describe, are completely contradictory in almost every detail. For those who want to literalize the Bible, the startling discovery is that in the Easter experience, on which the Christian movement so clearly stands, there is total disagreement on details. Who went to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week? Paul does not seem know that tradition at all, while none of the gospels agrees on who these women were. Three went says Mark; two went says Matthew; an undisclosed number went says Luke; only one went says John. The only thing they all agree on is that Magdalene was central in that drama. Did the women see the risen Christ at the tomb on that first Easter? No, says Mark; yes, says Matthew; no, says Luke; yes, says John but only on the second look. Who was the first witness to “see” the risen Lord? It was Cephas, says Paul. Mark never records anyone seeing. It was the woman in the garden says Matthew. It was Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus says Luke. It was Magdalene says John. Where were the disciples when the Easter experience, whatever it was, broke upon their consciousness? Paul doesn’t say. Mark says it will be in Galilee. Matthew says it was in Galilee on top of a mountain. Luke says it was never in Galilee but occurred only in Jerusalem and its immediate environs. John says it was originally in Jerusalem, but then he suggests much later it also occurred in Galilee. So it is that we have an event that so clearly brought about substantial changes, making its reality hard to dispute, but when people sought to explain what actually happened, they disagreed on almost every detail. This points, I believe, to the probability that the experience itself defied all human limits and forced those who were impacted by it to explain in human language this inexplicable action that was of God, but its effects were expressed inside human life. That is what the Easter experience was and is. That is also why those, who want to literalize its physicality and make the explanation of 40-70 years after the event a requirement for being a Christian, misunderstood so totally both the faith they seek to follow and the gospels they read so loosely. Neither the miracles of Jesus nor the Resurrection of Jesus can be understood as literal, supernatural events. They are far more, not less, than that. The crucial fourth fundamental, I think we can state with authority, does not defend Christian truth, but actually distorts Christianity badly. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements | | | | | | | | Wild Goose Festival July 11 - 14th in Hot Springs, NC A 4-day Spirit, Justice, Music and Arts Festival But it’s so much more than that. Author Brian McLaren sums it up this way: “At Wild Goose, people flock together to celebrate a way of life rooted in faith, justice, creativity, and beauty. It’s like a family reunion where you meet relatives you never knew you had. It’s a wild and wonderful convergence of stimulating conversations, campfires, music, kids, art, lawn chairs, prayer, fun, dance, frisbees, tents, food, sunshine, rain, laughter, and fresh air. There’s nothing like it, and I look forward to it as one of the best weeks of my year.” READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Celebrating the Completed Life of Fred Haman
by Lynda C 02 Jul '19

02 Jul '19

I had a note on messenger from Lori Haman Nash that Fred had passed this past weekend. Fred was part of the Chicago Religious House with us in Fifth City many years ago. (Jeremiah was in kindergarten or lst grade, so about 1983.) I recall that he was involved with a Lutheran congregation at that time and also trying to keep us all healthy with Shaklee vitamins which helped supplement his income. He also was part of the staff of Fifth City Business Careers as it started up. Fred’s gentle manner and hearty chuckle comes to mind as I remember him. Lori wrote the following in response to some of my questions: My daughter's and I were able to drive up from Texas to be with Dad and Juli for almost a week before he passed. He made it there days past his 89th birthday. It was a full life. I still love in Texas, but he was in Colorado with my sister, Juli, talking care of him the last four years. We are going to have a memorial service in Houston but are still trying to iron out the details. His obituary is now posted at https://www.monarchsociety.com/obituary/frederick-haman-jr Our deep care to Doug, Julie and Lori who were all part of our Phase I programs. Journey on, dear colleague, Lynda and John Cock

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Re: [Oe List ...] Please help refugees on our southern border
by Del Morrill 28 Jun '19

28 Jun '19

What type of volunteering? Where do volunteers stay? Etc. Del Facebook.com/del.morrill.85 Location: USA, Pacific Northwest, Washington State, Tacoma <http://www.hypnocenter.com/> www.hypnocenter.com “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” From: OE <oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> On Behalf Of Robertson Work via OE Sent: Saturday, June 22, 2019 4:48 PM To: ORDER ECUMENICAL <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>; Colleague Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: Robertson Work <warkers(a)msn.com> Subject: [Oe List ...] Please help refugees on our southern border Kaze (Kaye Hayes) Gadway and I just had a conversation concerning what the refugees need on our southern border. To buy these items below please send a Walmart, Amazon, or Visa gift card to: Kaye Gadway, 1111 Cardenas St., SE, Apt. 222, Albuquerque, NM, 87108. The most needed items are: pedialyte packets, sippy cups, short baby bottles, backpacks, underpants, full length socks, tee shirts in small or medium, shoe laces, cough medicine, children's aspirin, cough drops, Vaseline, and anti-biotic cream. Kaye is on the southern border now, and will return next month. She will post photos and stories next week. The refugee's suffering is heart breaking, but many people are helping as they can. Volunteers are also needed. Thank you. ................................................................................................ Recent book: A Compassionate Civilization: The Urgency of Sustainable Development and Mindful Activism - Reflections and Recommendations <https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546972617> https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546972617 Blog: https://compassionatecivilization.blogspot.com/ LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsonwork/> https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsonwork/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/compassionatecivilization/ _____ From: OE <oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net> > on behalf of Frank Knutson via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> > Sent: Saturday, June 22, 2019 6:37 PM To: ORDER ECUMENICAL Cc: Frank Knutson Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Colleagues in Dallas? Randy Williams ❤ On Jun 22, 2019, at 3:03 PM, Wesson Gaige via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> > wrote: Wesson Gaige is in Denton. On Jun 21, 2019, at 9:05 PM, James Wiegel via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net> > wrote: Strange situation. Who are colleagues in the vicinity of Dallas? With respect, Jim Wiegel _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:OE@lists.wedgeblade.net> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:OE@lists.wedgeblade.net> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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Global Buzz Reminder
by ICA International 28 Jun '19

28 Jun '19

Reminder for entries This reminder is for the Global Buzz that will be published July 5th. 2019 (Please send your entries at least a day or more ahead) Please send all your entries by regular e-mail to: inform(a)ica-international.org with your entry as an attatchment. Send details of news items, training programmes, your peer to peer connections with other ICAs, any concerns you may have and of any events that are coming up at your location. Your report can be long or short, but remember that all other ICAs would really like to know about the things that matter where you are, and what you are doing as an ICA. Peter, for ICAI Communications Pour les entrées de rappel Ce rappel est à la Global Buzz qui sera publié le 5 juillet 2019 (Veuillez envoyer vos entrées au moins une journée à l'avance) Veuillez envoyer toutes vos entrées maintenant par courriel ordinaire à : inform(a)ica-international.org avec votre entrée comme un attatchment. Envoyer les détails des articles de nouvelles, des programmes de formation, vos connexions peer to peer avec d'autres CIAS, de toute préoccupation que vous pourriez avoir et de tous les événements qui sont à venir à votre emplacement. Votre rapport peut être longue ou courte, mais rappelez-vous que toutes les autres CIAS aimerait vraiment savoir à propos de choses qui importe où vous êtes et ce que vous faites comme une ICA. Recordatorio de las entradas Este aviso es para el Global Buzz que se publicarán 5 julio 2019 (Favor de enviar sus entradas al menos con un día de antelación) Por favor envíe todos sus entradas ahora por correo electrónico a: inform(a)ica-international.org con su entrada como un archivo adjunto. Enviar detalles de noticias, programas de capacitación, el peer to peer las conexiones con otros convenios o acuerdos internacionales, las preocupaciones que usted pueda tener y de los eventos que se aproximan en su ubicación. El informe puede ser a corto o largo, pero hay que recordar que todos los demás convenios quisiera saber realmente sobre lo que realmente importa, y lo que están haciendo una ICA.

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6/27/19, Progressing Spirit: Forrester: Living Christs of Touch; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 27 Jun '19

27 Jun '19

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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv5885945327 #yiv5885945327templateBody .yiv5885945327mcnTextContent, #yiv5885945327 #yiv5885945327templateBody .yiv5885945327mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv5885945327 #yiv5885945327templateFooter .yiv5885945327mcnTextContent, #yiv5885945327 #yiv5885945327templateFooter .yiv5885945327mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } As soon as religion forgets about its roots in the eternal, it fails in its central task. | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Living Christs of Touch | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. June 27, 2019 If your life were ending and you were given the chance to write a few words to encapsulate its essence, what would you say? The story wouldn’t have to be historical, or literally true, but it would need to offer an authentic window into your soul and the heart of your heart. I ask this because I am amazed with the story presented in John’s gospel to offer us the essence of Rabbi Jesus. This is the only gospel in which, as Jesus’ death approaches, he is depicted as caring for his friends by touching their bodies – no meal, a few words, and the washing of feet. Of all the possible stories John could have created to convey his convictions – a stunning miracle or a captivating oration – the gospel author simply has Jesus essentially engaging in tender and intimate touch. Inviting his friends to do the same (which is so much more than learning to imitate.) As his prospect for survival fades and the death of his bodily self approaches, Jesus does not retreat, nor does he attack. He surprisingly reaches out. He loves – not abstractly, not theoretically. Jesus teaches his spiritual path through embodiment. The depth of his own realization manifests in the utter simplicity of his action. Being is Loving, even in the face of apparent annihilation. In Jesus, the human survival instinct, where we are driven at almost all costs to preserve our bodily self, is not destroyed. The instinct is transformed as it is subsumed into a larger seamless Reality – within John’s brief account we are offered a vision of a spiritual path for humanity that is one of a revolutionary mystic. I recently finished reading Yuval Noah Harari’s magnificent and provocative book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harari pierces the bubble of the pervasive myth that homo sapiens reign triumphant at the summit of evolution after a rather peaceful, solitary and linear development. On the contrary, he chronicles how the dawn of homo sapiens is marred by our genocide of at least two other human species with whom we shared this earth – Denisovans and Neanderthals. Initially retreating back to east Africa after feeling their survival threatened, our ancient forebears reemerged, attacked and destroyed. Although there was some interbreeding among the various human species, detectable today in our own DNA, this was minimal. But, not only did our ancestors annihilate other humans, they were then responsible for the decimation of the majority of large mammals in Australia and the Americas (once thought to have been due to precipitous climate change). This violent dawn of the history of homo sapiens was a harbinger of countless tragedies to come over the following millennia. Often religion, as a cultural force that binds groups together, reinforced and offered justification for the destruction of others whose presence was perceived as threatening one’s own, and one’s tribe’s survival. Touch was neither tender nor intimate – it was terrifyingly terminal. Harari’s book is a sobering testament: Our species kills, and we destroy the lives of others readily and easily. When we fear for the survival of our bodily self, we feel compelled to retreat to find safety, or we ruthlessly attack: think Christ Church, New Zealand, or Sri Lanka, to name two recent atrocities. Our nervous system feels overwhelmed and we react out of desperation. Apart from Harari’s historical perspective, what I’m describing is not new. But the information does highlight the significance of John’s story about Jesus. Jesus is a wisdom figure in that vein of Axial spiritual teachers (chronicled in such illustrative detail by Karen Armstrong in The Great Transformation) who has realized that another human path is not only possible, such a path is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, our species will likely not survive, and neither will so many of the other magnificent and irreplaceable creatures with whom we share this sphere. John’s story of Jesus is the genesis of a new kind of spiritual path arising in Judaism – a revolutionary mystical path that offers homo sapiens a chance for our survival instinct not to be destroyed (which is impossible), but to be transformed by being incorporated into a larger Reality (John 17:21, “that all may be one”). If this path is to be fruitful, then Christianity will need to discover how to form faith-communities that are sources of instinctual transformation, rather than belief-clubs that reinforce the fear and prejudice and destruction deeply rooted in our species. This is complex, and my focus is simply one questioning thread within evolution’s tapestry: why do we exist as a Christian community? Even more fundamentally, what is it that is utterly unique about spiritual communities? What do they have to offer humanity that is absolutely necessary? The answer, as far as I can tell, has to do with realizing that our love of life needs to mature into the love of Being, which includes, yet transcends, the love of our bodily self. I believe that the one gift that a spiritual community can offer that is utterly unique, is that of being an experiential school providing an effective path for a soul to realize her true nature as a manifestation of Being. My sense is that this describes John’s community (as well as that of Thomas). John’s gospel has its own language to express this realization – Jesus comes to know himself as the Word become flesh. In John’s experience, when God speaks, the Logos manifests, and in history Jesus comes to be as the Logos. (Remember, this is poetry, not prose.) As I unpack the poetic insight of John, the Deep resounds and the song that is life sings. Each creature is a note of the Deep’s voice. There is no gap between the Deep and the Singing. Breath is expressed in sound and sound is shaped as word. Creatures are the sounding Words of God. A spirituality of Being is a radical and revolutionary mysticism in which all gaps disappear. Radical means rooted. Each and every creature is rooted in and as Being. We are each word uniquely shaping the exhalation (the creating flowing forth) of Being. This means that spiritual communities essentially exist that we might realize this truth of our nature, and in this realization become enraptured with the song of creating. Spiritual communities exist to invite us to fall in love with the moist breath of Being arising from our own depths – a Deep Source that never dies. In his captivating book, Resurrecting Jesus: Embodying the Spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic, Adyashanti writes in the spirit of John. He recognizes that “religion’s primary function is not about conveying ethical and moral codes”; it is “not about politics and power and hierarchy.” No, religion’s “primary function is to awaken within us the experience of the sublime and to connect us with the mystery of existence. As soon as religion forgets about its roots in the eternal, it fails in its central task.” And with that failing we are reduced to bestial destruction, with spirituality becoming a hollow shell of strident moral righteousness justifying the ego’s fears and desires to perpetuate the existence of our bodily self at all costs. If we, as homo sapiens, do not awaken to the sublime and realize our connection with the Holy Mystery of existence, which is Being, we will not know how to touch each other, and the creatures of creation, tenderly. Without our connection with the Holy Mystery of existence, we will continue our history of the destruction of life. But, with our direct realization that the mystery of Being is our true nature, then it becomes possible for us to mature, like Jesus, into revolutionary mystics. We become no longer preoccupied with the defensive protection of our small bodily self. We develop the capacity to be open to touch and healing in the face of threat. We become – not imitators of Jesus – but living, creative, Christs, where Word touches Word, and bodily death is incapable of harming or destroying Being. ~ Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. Read online here About the Author Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest, a student of the Diamond Approach for over a decade, as well as a certified teacher of the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition. He is the founder of the Healing Arts Center of St. Paul’s Church in Marquette, Michigan, and the author of five books, including “I Have Called You Friends“, “Holding Beauty in My Soul’s Arms“, and “My Heart is a Raging Volcano of Love for You” and “Beyond my Wants, Beyond my Fears: The Soul’s Journey into the Heartland“. Visit Kevin’s Blog: Essential Living: For The Soul’s Journey | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Helen What do you make of St. Matthew 25? A: By Bishop John Shelby Spong Dear Helen, Since the dominant narrative in the 25th Chapter of Mathew is the parable of The Judgment in which Jesus is purported to tell of that final moment when the Son of Man comes to separate the sheep from the goats, I assume that this is the content to which you are referring. The standard of judgment that is used as the basis of judgment comes as a surprise to both groups. Neither the sheep that were to be rewarded nor the goats that were to be punished seemed to know when it was they had done or not done the determinative deeds of feeding, clothing and visiting the Son of Man. The powerful conclusion was that "in as much as ye have done" (or not done) these acts of kindness "to the least of these" who are our brothers and sisters, you have done them to the Son of Man. It is a provocative parable. It suggests that the only way you can love God is to love your fellow human beings. The only way you can serve God is to serve the people of God's world. It points to the reality, recognized so powerfully by the prophet Amos, that the worship of God is nothing but human justice offered to God, and that human justice is nothing but the worship of God being acted out. This means that a religious system treating any human being out of a prejudiced definition, and thereby diminishing that person's humanity, cannot possibly be of God. It means that no one can rejoice in another's misfortune. It means that in the sight of God Iraqi casualties of war are as precious in the eyes of God as American casualties of war. This parable makes contact with that essential definition of God found in the first Epistle of John. "God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God." I am not impressed with the reward and punishment aspects of this parable. I think they reflect a rather outdated idea of God who is involved in behavior control. I do not think people mature if they do anything for either reward or punishment. The call of God in Christ is in my mind a call to step into a new humanity, beyond tribe and prejudice and all human definition of worth and status, so that each of us might be enabled to give away our love to others without stopping to evaluate whether our love is deserved. That is the meaning of Matthew 25 to me. ~ Bishop John Shelby Spong Published November 19, 2003 Read and share online here | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community! | | | | | | Join our FB community today! Spread the word, share with friends. Thanks! | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Fourth Fundamental: Miracles and the Resurrection, Part V Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong October 10, 2007 Did Jesus literally and physically walk out of his grave, restored to life, on the third day following his crucifixion? Those who drafted the Five Fundamentals thought so and insisted that anyone who did not say a convincing “yes” to that proposition could no longer claim to be a Christian. The resurrection of Jesus in a physical, bodily form was thought of as the central miracle, the one unwavering truth to which all must adhere. It gives one a sense of how badly eroded these fundamental convictions have become in our time when we realize that no reputable biblical or theological scholar today would be willing to assert that the resurrection of Jesus must be understood as a physical resuscitation of his dead body to live again inside the life of this world. Unfortunately, most people are not biblical scholars and they do not realize that this interpretation of the Easter experience that turns it into a narrative about the three days dead Jesus literally walking out of the tomb is the product of the third Christian generation and finds its origin primarily in the late ninth and early tenth decades when the gospels of Luke and John were written. This resuscitated body was never the transformative experience that occurred at some point after the crucifixion and that convinced Jesus’ disciples that something about his life transcended the ultimate barrier of death and opened a pathway into the eternity of God. Paul, the first writer in the New Testament knows of no resuscitated body. He does say that “if Christ be not raised we of all people are the most to be pitied.” The question is, however, what did he mean by the word “raised?” We note first that Paul always uses a passive word for the resurrection. Jesus never rises for Paul, God always raises him. God is the one who initiates the action. Jesus is the one acted upon. So the question becomes: to what did God raise Jesus? For Paul it was clearly that God raised him into what God is, that is into the eternal presence out of whom Jesus could manifest himself to certain chosen witness. In Romans (1:1-4), Paul states this very overtly. God designated or declared Jesus, to be the Son of God by the action of “the spirit of holiness” in raising him, not from death back to life in this world, but from death into God. Resurrection and ascension were two parts of the same action for Paul. Later when resurrection was changed to mean resuscitation, a means to get Jesus back into the life of God had to be developed. That is what accounted for the 10th decade narrative of Jesus ascending into the sky. When the minds of first century Christians tried to conceptualize their experience it was almost inevitable that they would in time literalize these symbols, but that was not the way this life changing experience was first understood. A second piece of Pauline writing develops this point even further with two specific references: In I Corinthians 15, written perhaps three years before the epistle to the Romans, Paul makes it clear that resurrection had nothing to do with a physically resuscitated body. He says, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.” He talks about a spiritual body growing out of the physical like a stalk of corn grows out of a seed. He stretches vocabulary almost to a breaking point to say that resurrection is real, but it is not physical. Later in that same epistle Paul lists those to whom the raised Christ “made himself known.” That word is frequently translated “appeared,” making people think of a physical encounter when the word more closely means “was made manifest” and suggests that the viewer has had his or her eyes opened to see a new reality. It has a sense about it of infinite sight, an insight or a second sight. Paul’s list of those to whom the raised Christ was made manifest is fascinating in many ways: Cephas (i.e. Peter) is first, and then come “the Twelve.” Please note that the group identified as “the Twelve” still apparently includes Judas Iscariot. Paul dates the resurrection “on the third day” by which time it would have been quite impossible for a replacement for Judas to have been elected. Indeed Luke says the choice of Matthias to replace Judas Iscariot did not take place for weeks. It is interesting to trace the origins of the story of the betrayal. It makes its first appearance when Paul dates the Last Supper as having occurred “on the night he was handed over.” It is the word translated “handed over,” that was later rendered betrayed, that becomes the catalyst around which the narrative about Judas Iscariot developed. Judas Iscariot does not appear to have been an original part of the earliest Christian story. There is no other reference to a betrayal in the entire Pauline corpus. It is quite obvious that Paul did not know the tradition that one of the Twelve had been a traitor. That narrative begins only in Mark. Paul’s list of “witnesses” continues with the mention of “500 brethren,” a story that has no counterpart in any gospel. Then it moves to James who is unidentified. Is this James Zebedee, James the son of Alphaus or James the brother of Jesus? The consensus among scholars today is that this is James the brother of Jesus, who became the leader of the church in Jerusalem and Paul’s adversary. Next come “the Apostles.” Who are they? Paul has already listed “the Twelve.” Is this a different group? Finally, Paul lists himself as one to whom Jesus was made manifest. Paul’s conversion is placed by most scholars between one and six years after the crucifixion. Paul could not have possibly seen a resuscitated, physical body. The book of Acts calls Paul’s “seeing of the Lord” a vision on the road to Damascus. While Paul himself does not mention the road to Damascus, he does talk about an ecstatic experience in which he was lifted to the “third heaven,” where he saw things that people do not normally see. Reading Paul convinces the scholars that resurrection understood as a physically resuscitated body was not an idea that Paul ever entertained. Recall that Paul wrote between the years 50 and 64. Mark, writing in the early years of the 8th decade, never relates an account of the raised Christ appearing to anyone. He just confronts his readers with an empty tomb, a symbol of the conviction that death cannot contain him. Matthew, writing in the early to mid 9th decade takes the first step toward a physical understanding of resurrection when he portrays the women in the garden as being capable of grasping the feet of Jesus. My perception is that one cannot grasp feet that are not physical. Two things, however, call Matthew’s accuracy in this instance into question. First, he has quite deliberately changed Mark’s narrative upon which he bases his entire gospel. In Mark the women never see anything other than an empty tomb. Matthew has thus altered his original source. Luke, who also has Mark in front of him as he writes, follows Mark’s text accurately. In Luke the women do not see the raised Christ. Even if one is a biblical literalist one has to face the fact that in the New Testament, by a two to one vote, this story in Matthew is regarded as an inaccurate alteration of the original text. The second thing that calls into question the accuracy of Matthew’s story of the woman seeing a physical, raised Jesus in the garden is that in this gospel’s only other resurrection narrative it is clearly not a resuscitated, physical Jesus who meets with the disciples. It is rather a vision of a glorified Christ who comes out of the sky robed in all of the messianic symbols that were traditionally attached to the Son of Man who would inaugurate the Kingdom of God. This visionary Christ comes to give the disciples the great commandment that launched the church. It is clearly not a resuscitated body, but a transformed, glorified one. Please recall that when Matthew wrote, no account of Jesus’ ascension had yet entered the developing Christian story. When we discover that in our earliest New Testament sources of Paul and Mark there is no physical, bodily seeing of the raised Jesus, then it becomes obvious that the physicality of the resurrected body is a later development of the tradition. Mark’s women confront the emptiness of the tomb, hear a resurrection announcement given by a young man in a white robe and then flee in fear saying nothing to anyone, despite the fact that the messenger had instructed them to go to Galilee with the promise that Jesus would meet him there. Is this to be understood as the promise to meet Jesus in some resurrected, physical form in Galilee? Or is it the eternal command to return home to one’s roots if one is to encounter the holy? In time it was certainly read in the former sense, but the evidence points to the latter sense being the original meaning. When one comes to the late ninth and tenth decades writing of the gospels of Luke and John, the seeing of the raised Lord has surely become physical. The flesh of his raised body can be physically touched. Indeed Jesus invites them to do so, maintaining that he is not a ghost since ghosts do not have flesh and blood. This raised Jesus eats, demonstrating a functioning gastro-intestinal system, he talks, teaches and interprets Scripture, demonstrating functional vocal chords, larynx and brain, and he walks with Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus revealing a functioning skeletal system. The resurrection is now understood as a very physical phenomenon. Yet both Luke and John indicate that these images may be more symbolic than real since they also add very non-physical dimensions to the resurrected Jesus. In Luke, the body of Jesus can materialize out of thin air and it can also disappear in the same manner. In John, Jesus can enter the locked and barred upper room without bothering to open the doors. To turn the conviction that Jesus has somehow transcended the ultimate barrier of death and broken its power into a literal narrative about the resuscitation of a deceased body was probably inevitable, given the human need to use words to talk about life changing experiences. There are, however, great amounts of textual evidence that this was clearly not what Easter meant originally. What then did it mean? That is my topic for next week’s column. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements | | | | | | | | Beloved Festival, August 9-12, 2019 Tidewater Falls, OR Beloved is a 4-Day Sacred Art, Movement, and Music Festival on the Oregon Coast. Beloved is a healing event, intended to experiment with new models for culture. In the troubled times in which we live, people become divided against each other and can more easily feel isolated and separated from the Soul of the World. At Beloved, we become a sudden, mystical community where everyone can feel the touch of spirit while also deepening the soul of community. Click here for more information ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Colleagues in Dallas?
by James Wiegel 23 Jun '19

23 Jun '19

Strange situation. Who are colleagues in the vicinity of Dallas? With respect, Jim Wiegel

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