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Re: [Oe List ...] OE Digest, Vol 54, Issue 15
by David Flowers via OE 18 Sep '16

18 Sep '16

I often think of prayer without ceasing in the context of meditation, contemplation, and prayer. meditation - connect with what comes to you and let go. contemplation - connect with creation and listen. prayer - connect with creation in dialogue. so - I'm working on listening skills because ..... as a white middle-class male - the prayers of my generalized historic demographic have not served God's creation, if one is to notice the condition of our biosphere. (meditation for the sake of feeling "better" about a self-destructing global system is ....... your favorite expletive) On Sun, Sep 18, 2016 at 1:27 AM, via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: > Send OE mailing list submissions to > oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > oe-request(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > > You can reach the person managing the list at > oe-owner(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of OE digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: [Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, > Part XXXV ? Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) (Bill Schlesinger via OE) > 2. Salmon: On prayer (William Salmon via OE) > 3. Re: Responding to Spong on prayer (Adam Thomson via OE) > 4. Re: Responding to Spong on prayer (Paul Schrijnen via OE) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2016 09:04:32 -0600 > From: Bill Schlesinger via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > To: "'zbarley'" <zbarley(a)earthlink.net>, "'Order Ecumenical > Community'" <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New > Reformation, Part XXXV ? Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) > Message-ID: <048301d210f4$ccad74b0$66085e10$(a)pvida.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Not following the disappointment ? sounded like Spong was echoing the > non-magical understanding of prayer. ?These are little more than the > delusions of yesterday that we are now called on to abandon.? It?s pretty > clear that there are a lot of folk who would like a magically manipulated > world and who ask for it. Friend of mine says ?no gambler avoids > superstition. How the cards are held in the hand must influence the random > sequence of events!? Luck, superstitious prayer, magic ? or ?the act of > embracing transcendence and the conscious practice of sharing with another > the gifts of living, loving and being.? Sounds a lot like the prayer > short course from RS-1 to me. > > > > Bill Schlesinger > > > > From: OE [mailto:oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of zbarley > via OE > Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2016 8:50 AM > To: James Wiegel; Order Ecumenical Community > Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New > Reformation, Part XXXV ? Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) > > > > Ken and I just talked about Spong's latest and are disappointed in him on > this topic. I have trouble believing there are people who ask a Being in > the sky to intervene. But then I have trouble with people who believe Trump. > > > > Thanks for the prayer words - we had good poets amongst us. > > > > Zoe > > > > > > > > Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone > > > > -------- Original message -------- > From: James Wiegel via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Date: 2016/09/17 7:56 AM (GMT-07:00) > To: Ellie Stock <elliestock(a)aol.com>, Colleague Dialogue < > dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Cc: oe(a)wedgeblade.net > Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New > Reformation, Part XXXV ? Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) > > Trying to make sense of Spongs call for reformation and what is really > there. Read this section on Prayer, remembered the prayer song. See > below. Anyone recall the short courses on prayer from the RS1? > > > PRAYER > Tune: Aravah (Hebrew) > > When I see my life > ever is torn > > And loved ones > violated > > And my failures are > daily reborn > > Then sorrow with > heaven is weighted > > Yet I can gladly em- > brace every hour > > And praise God?s > inequity > > I can sing of my blessings > that shower > > My joy > inexpressible be. > > > Now here I stand > battered to and fro > > Now here I stand > battered to and fro > > The chaos within > yet surrounding > > I cry out my want and > the lack that I know > > And power from with- > out feel uplifting. > > > The weight of the world > on my shoulders I bear > > I echo the > voices that cry > > The path of Mankind > with my agony bent > > And my God I?ll fight on > ?til I die > > Jim Wiegel > 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353 > Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277 > jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com > www.partnersinparticipation.com > > "We are no longer living in an era of change. We are living in a change > of era." Francis > > Upcoming public course opportunities click here > http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=10 > For online registration go to http://www.top-training.net > > The AZ ToP? Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday, 1-4 pm, starting > again on Sept 5th at ACYR, 648 N. 5th Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85003 > AICP Planners: 14.5 CM for all ToP? courses > > > On Sep 16, 2016, at 10:12, Ellie Stock via Dialogue < > dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE > BOARDS CALENDAR > > > > Charting a New Reformation > > Part XXXV ? Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) > > Before prayer can be made real our understanding of God, coupled with > our understanding of how the world works, must be newly defined. Before > prayer can have meaning, it must be built on an honest sharing of life. > Cornelia, the woman about whom I wrote last week, did that for me. Before > prayer can be discussed in the age in which we live, it must be drained of > its presumed manipulative magic. It must find expression in the reality of > who we are, not in the details of what we do. These were the insights that > my third story gave to me as I walked through what was probably the darkest > period of my life, the years 1981-1989. The learning curve was steep; the > depth of despair was real. I invite you now to enter that time period with > me and to walk through that experience as I did. This narrative is true, > personal and painful. I have spoken verbally of it before. I have not > written about it. Doing so even now makes me feel quite vulnerable. > > > > Around Christmas of 1981, my first wife, Joan Lydia Ketner Spong, was > diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. She had never been fond of doctors > and so had postponed seeing one until she felt her symptoms had become > critical. She had discovered a lump in her breast much earlier and had > decided to tell no one for a very long time. It grew very slowly causing > her to assume, perhaps to hope, that it must be benign. It remained her > secret. That December as the holidays came into focus, however, the tumor > erupted externally and became a draining sore. When that occurred, I became > alarmed and got her as quickly as I could to a doctor. After an examination > and later a biopsy, we heard the verdict. She had a stage four malignancy. > Immediate surgery was required and massive chemotherapy would have to > follow the surgery. No guarantees were offered even then. In fact we were > told that about two years of life might be all that we could reasonably > expect. We sank into the shock of that > diagnosis. > > > > At that time I was an active and fairly high-profile public figure as > the bishop of Newark. We had been engaged in great controversies over the > full acceptance in both church and society of gay, lesbian, transgender and > bi-sexual persons. I was clearly identified in this fight and my name was > widely recognized from press and television coverage. People in public life > learn quickly that they really do not, perhaps cannot, have a private life. > Within minutes, it seemed, the news of both my wife?s diagnosis and her > prognosis spread until it seemed to me as if the whole world knew. From > that day on, I never visited a congregation in my diocese for confirmation > that prayers were not offered publicly for my wife and for me. Prayer > groups all over New Jersey informed us that they were praying for us ? some > were Episcopal, some were Roman Catholic and some were ecumenical. The one > thing they all appeared to have in common was that they knew of the > two-year maximum boundary that pre > sumably my wife and I were facing. I did not resent this invasion of our > privacy. I was rather appreciative of their efforts, as was Joan. Their > actions felt supportive and loving. In their own way, the people were > telling us that they really cared for us and, in whatever way they could, > they wanted to help. They were willing in this way to stand with us, to > share in our pain and in our struggle. One never rejects > love that is so freely offered, even when the form > in which it comes might not be one?s particular style. So Joan and I were > carried by this wave of love from those who reached out to us in what was > clearly our time of need. > > > > The months passed and then the years began to mount. When we passed the > two-year prediction date, and things were still going positively, I noticed > that these prayer groups began to take credit for my wife?s longevity. In > their letters to me, it almost sounded as if they believed that they had > engaged the powers of evil in some profound contest that pitted them on > God?s side, holding back God?s enemies. Their prayers, they suggested, were > pushing back the advance of this demonic sickness. They were winning the > battle and they felt good about their success. Once again, my response was > not to debate the theological implications of their understanding of > prayer, but simply to appreciate the level of caring that they were > offering. It was, at least in its intention, sustaining. I could not help, > however, in the darkness of each night to wonder about the implications of > their understanding of prayer > > > > ?Suppose,? I thought to myself during a particularly sleepless time, > ?that a member of the City of Newark?s sanitation department had a wife > with cancer.? At that time, Newark, New Jersey, was either at or very near > the top of the list of America?s poorest per capita cities. I tried to > envision just who it was who might occupy the bottom tier of Newark?s > socio-economic status system. My mind settled, whether rightly or wrongly, > on the garbage collector working for Newark?s sanitation department. So I > focused on him. > > > > In this long dark meditation, I wondered how many prayer groups would > have added her name to their lists. How much public notice would her > illness have achieved? If this couple went to church, perhaps that > community might have been aware of their struggle, but would services have > been interrupted with passionate petitions for healing? Would the gates of > heaven have been stormed by massive number of prayers? Would God, I then > wondered, let this man?s wife die more quickly than my wife? My high public > profile and social prominence alone caused more prayers to be uttered for > my wife than for his. Would those prayers be a factor, I wondered, in > either healing or longevity? Does God operate on the basis of human status? > If I believed that prayer worked in this way, I would immediately become an > atheist! I could not possibly believe in such a deity. This capricious God > would be demonic, it seemed to me. The cumulative power of many people > praying existed in the case of my wife on > ly because I was a fairly well known public figure. Is status a factor in > what is thought of as the healing power of God? When John Paul II lingered > on his death bed for so long, the whole world joined in prayer for him. Was > that a factor in his long lingering death? When hurricanes barrel down on a > population center like New Orleans, the cries of millions are lifted > heavenward in prayer. Will the cumulative power of many prayers affect the > course of a life, change the direction of a hurricane or alter the path of > a disease? Is that what prayer does? If so, then prayer is a tool to be > used by the mighty, the powerful and the well-known. If that is true then > God clearly cares more for the rich and famous than God does for the poor, > the forgotten and the unknown. Such a conclusion becomes theologically > violent, absurd and even hate-filled. Whatever prayer means, it cannot be > that. My wife lived for six and a half years from her diagnosis in December > of 1981 to her death in Aug > ust of 1988. In retrospect, I treasure that extension of time, but I did > not fully understand then the gift that I was given. Life is like that. As > St. Paul says, we see only ?through a glass darkly.? > > > > So I put these stories with their varied and distinctive insights > together. Then I seek to draw conclusions about what prayer means in the > 21st century. Prayer is not and cannot be a petition from the weak to the > all-powerful one to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Prayer does > not bend God?s will to a new conclusion. Prayer does not bring a cure where > there is no possibility of a cure. Prayer does not create miracles to which > we can testify publicly. > > > > These are little more than the delusions of yesterday that we are now > called on to abandon. They arose out of the childhood of our humanity. > Today a new question emerges, which we must face with honesty. Is prayer > only the human act of last resort? Does praying reflect anything more than > the fact that all else has failed? Why do we say so frequently to people, > ?You will be in my prayers,? when we never stop to pray? Is it not our > impotence in the face of life?s pain that draws us to pretend that we > actually possess the power to make a difference, creating nothing more than > a comfortable fantasy land in which we can hide? > > > > Is my experience, which tells me that loving, caring and sharing matter, > actually real? Can prayer be defined as something other than this pious > activity? Does it have any claim on reality? Is prayer a holy activity or > is it a preparation for a time of engaging in a holy activity? > Increasingly, I am moving to the latter conclusion. It is life that is > holy. It is love that is life-giving. Having the courage to be all that I > can be is the place where God and life come together for me. If that is so, > is not living, loving and being the essence of prayer and the > meaning of worship? When Paul enjoined us to > ?pray without ceasing? did he mean to engage the activity of praying > unceasingly? Or did he mean that we are to see all of life as a prayer > calling the world to enter that place where life, love and being reveal the > meaning of God? Is Christianity not coming to the place where my ?I? meets > another?s ?Thou? and in that moment God is > present? > > > > I pray daily. In my own way, I bring before the eyes of my mind those I > love and thus into my awareness of the holy in which my life seems to be > lived. Do I expect miracles to occur, lives to be changed or wholeness > suddenly to replace brokenness? No, but I do expect to be made more whole, > to be set free to share my life more deeply with others, to be enabled to > love beyond my boundaries and to watch the barriers that divide me from > those I once avoided lowered. Prayer to me is the practice of the presence > of God, the act of embracing transcendence and the conscious practice of > sharing with another the gifts of living, loving and being. Can that > understanding of prayer, so free of miracle and magic, make any real > difference in our world? I believe it can, it does and it will. > > > > John Shelby Spong > > > > > > Question & Answer > > Clifford Hill of Wheaton, Illinois, writes: > > > > > > Question: > > I am a member of a United Methodist Church in Wheaton, Illinois. Over > the years, I have taught many adult classes and would, in that process, > include many of Bart Ehrman?s offerings in the Great Courses series. > Currently, my class has six sessions of his course: After the New > Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, remaining and I had > planned to present these this coming fall. I received a call from our > Director of Care Minister, who is the scheduler for adult classes. She > asked me to cancel this class because some persons, (unknown to me), but > who are not members of the class, had complained about it. Earlier our > senior pastor had mentioned to me that I sho > >

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Responding to Spong on prayer
by Susan Fertig via OE 18 Sep '16

18 Sep '16

This makes me so sad to read Spong’s intended destruction of what I believe to be a real force and a most precious aspect of our relationship with God. Why not miracles today as in Jesus’ time? I’ve witnessed some myself. He sent out thousands to heal in His name. And they did, with some success and some failure. Why is one person healed and one not? How can we know? Why do we need to know? The outcome in any one case does not change the call to us to engage in this way. And the supernatural qualities of the stories of Jesus healing people is not mutually exclusive with the symbolic importance of these events. Whether the pallet I lie upon represents my own physical ailment or disability or whether it represents the problems in my life that I have not chosen to confront or overcome and that have crippled me in a symbolic sense, both elements of that situation are healable and can be miracles. if we ask and God chooses to respond. A big IF. But suppose God does not choose to respond in the way we have prayed for? Does that negate the importance of the interaction with Him? Not at all. The prayer is a potential source of intimacy with God for the pray-er that has little to do with whether or not physical healing occurs—Does not Spong understand that his wife’s illness brought great numbers of people into a new relationship with God as they prayed for her? If they then took new hope in concluding that their prayers were being answered, who is to say that wasn’t true? Doesn’t he wonder if perhaps his wife lived longer than expected just to enhance a new or intensified relationship those praying for her were discovering with their God? How is Spong so arrogant as to assume that a sanitation worker’s wife wouldn’t have people praying for her just as passionately as people prayed for his wife? Love in Christ, Susan Susan Fertig-Dykes (personal email account) And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought . Isaiah 58:11 Protect against email address harvesting: Use "BCC" when sending to multiple addresses; delete senders’ E-Mail addresses when forwarding. NOTE: I won’t be offended if you ask me to remove you from my emails. From: OE [mailto:oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of James Wiegel via OE Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2016 9:56 AM To: Ellie Stock <elliestock(a)aol.com>; Colleague Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: oe(a)wedgeblade.net Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) Trying to make sense of Spongs call for reformation and what is really there. Read this section on Prayer, remembered the prayer song. See below. Anyone recall the short courses on prayer from the RS1? PRAYER Tune: Aravah (Hebrew) When I see my life ever is torn And loved ones violated And my failures are daily reborn Then sorrow with heaven is weighted Yet I can gladly em- brace every hour And praise God’s inequity I can sing of my blessings that shower My joy inexpressible be. Now here I stand battered to and fro Now here I stand battered to and fro The chaos within yet surrounding I cry out my want and the lack that I know And power from with- out feel uplifting. The weight of the world on my shoulders I bear I echo the voices that cry The path of Mankind with my agony bent And my God I’ll fight on ‘til I die Jim Wiegel 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353<x-apple-data-detectors://0> Tel. 011-623-936-8671<tel:011-623-936-8671> or 011-623-363-3277<tel:011-623-363-3277> jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com<mailto:marilyn.oyler@gmail.com> www.partnersinparticipation.com<http://www.partnersinparticipation.com/> "We are no longer living in an era of change. We are living in a change of era." Francis Upcoming public course opportunities click here http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=10 For online registration go to http://www.top-training.net<http://www.top-training.net/> The AZ ToP® Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday, 1-4 pm<x-apple-data-detectors://8>, starting again on Sept 5th<x-apple-data-detectors://9> at ACYR, 648 N. 5th Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85003<https://www.google.com/maps/place/648+N+5th+Ave/@33.456329,-112.080545,16z/…> AICP Planners: 14.5 CM for all ToP® courses On Sep 16, 2016, at 10:12, Ellie Stock via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> wrote: [http://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/newsletter_he…] Homepage<http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…> My Profile<http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…> Essay Archive<http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…> Message Boards<http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…> Calendar<http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…> Charting a New Reformation Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) Before prayer can be made real our understanding of God, coupled with our understanding of how the world works, must be newly defined. Before prayer can have meaning, it must be built on an honest sharing of life. Cornelia, the woman about whom I wrote last week, did that for me. Before prayer can be discussed in the age in which we live, it must be drained of its presumed manipulative magic. It must find expression in the reality of who we are, not in the details of what we do. These were the insights that my third story gave to me as I walked through what was probably the darkest period of my life, the years 1981-1989. The learning curve was steep; the depth of despair was real. I invite you now to enter that time period with me and to walk through that experience as I did. This narrative is true, personal and painful. I have spoken verbally of it before. I have not written about it. Doing so even now makes me feel quite vulnerable. Around Christmas of 1981, my first wife, Joan Lydia Ketner Spong, was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. She had never been fond of doctors and so had postponed seeing one until she felt her symptoms had become critical. She had discovered a lump in her breast much earlier and had decided to tell no one for a very long time. It grew very slowly causing her to assume, perhaps to hope, that it must be benign. It remained her secret. That December as the holidays came into focus, however, the tumor erupted externally and became a draining sore. When that occurred, I became alarmed and got her as quickly as I could to a doctor. After an examination and later a biopsy, we heard the verdict. She had a stage four malignancy. Immediate surgery was required and massive chemotherapy would have to follow the surgery. No guarantees were offered even then. In fact we were told that about two years of life might be all that we could reasonably expect. We sank into the shock of that diagnosis. At that time I was an active and fairly high-profile public figure as the bishop of Newark. We had been engaged in great controversies over the full acceptance in both church and society of gay, lesbian, transgender and bi-sexual persons. I was clearly identified in this fight and my name was widely recognized from press and television coverage. People in public life learn quickly that they really do not, perhaps cannot, have a private life. Within minutes, it seemed, the news of both my wife’s diagnosis and her prognosis spread until it seemed to me as if the whole world knew. From that day on, I never visited a congregation in my diocese for confirmation that prayers were not offered publicly for my wife and for me. Prayer groups all over New Jersey informed us that they were praying for us – some were Episcopal, some were Roman Catholic and some were ecumenical. The one thing they all appeared to have in common was that they knew of the two-year maximum boundary that presumably my wife and I were facing. I did not resent this invasion of our privacy. I was rather appreciative of their efforts, as was Joan. Their actions felt supportive and loving. In their own way, the people were telling us that they really cared for us and, in whatever way they could, they wanted to help. They were willing in this way to stand with us, to share in our pain and in our struggle. One never rejects love that is so freely offered, even when the form in which it comes might not be one’s particular style. So Joan and I were carried by this wave of love from those who reached out to us in what was clearly our time of need. The months passed and then the years began to mount. When we passed the two-year prediction date, and things were still going positively, I noticed that these prayer groups began to take credit for my wife’s longevity. In their letters to me, it almost sounded as if they believed that they had engaged the powers of evil in some profound contest that pitted them on God’s side, holding back God’s enemies. Their prayers, they suggested, were pushing back the advance of this demonic sickness. They were winning the battle and they felt good about their success. Once again, my response was not to debate the theological implications of their understanding of prayer, but simply to appreciate the level of caring that they were offering. It was, at least in its intention, sustaining. I could not help, however, in the darkness of each night to wonder about the implications of their understanding of prayer “Suppose,” I thought to myself during a particularly sleepless time, “that a member of the City of Newark’s sanitation department had a wife with cancer.” At that time, Newark, New Jersey, was either at or very near the top of the list of America’s poorest per capita cities. I tried to envision just who it was who might occupy the bottom tier of Newark’s socio-economic status system. My mind settled, whether rightly or wrongly, on the garbage collector working for Newark’s sanitation department. So I focused on him. In this long dark meditation, I wondered how many prayer groups would have added her name to their lists. How much public notice would her illness have achieved? If this couple went to church, perhaps that community might have been aware of their struggle, but would services have been interrupted with passionate petitions for healing? Would the gates of heaven have been stormed by massive number of prayers? Would God, I then wondered, let this man’s wife die more quickly than my wife? My high public profile and social prominence alone caused more prayers to be uttered for my wife than for his. Would those prayers be a factor, I wondered, in either healing or longevity? Does God operate on the basis of human status? If I believed that prayer worked in this way, I would immediately become an atheist! I could not possibly believe in such a deity. This capricious God would be demonic, it seemed to me. The cumulative power of many people praying existed in the case of my wife only because I was a fairly well known public figure. Is status a factor in what is thought of as the healing power of God? When John Paul II lingered on his death bed for so long, the whole world joined in prayer for him. Was that a factor in his long lingering death? When hurricanes barrel down on a population center like New Orleans, the cries of millions are lifted heavenward in prayer. Will the cumulative power of many prayers affect the course of a life, change the direction of a hurricane or alter the path of a disease? Is that what prayer does? If so, then prayer is a tool to be used by the mighty, the powerful and the well-known. If that is true then God clearly cares more for the rich and famous than God does for the poor, the forgotten and the unknown. Such a conclusion becomes theologically violent, absurd and even hate-filled. Whatever prayer means, it cannot be that. My wife lived for six and a half years from her diagnosis in December of 1981 to her death in August of 1988. In retrospect, I treasure that extension of time, but I did not fully understand then the gift that I was given. Life is like that. As St. Paul says, we see only “through a glass darkly.” So I put these stories with their varied and distinctive insights together. Then I seek to draw conclusions about what prayer means in the 21st century. Prayer is not and cannot be a petition from the weak to the all-powerful one to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Prayer does not bend God’s will to a new conclusion. Prayer does not bring a cure where there is no possibility of a cure. Prayer does not create miracles to which we can testify publicly. These are little more than the delusions of yesterday that we are now called on to abandon. They arose out of the childhood of our humanity. Today a new question emerges, which we must face with honesty. Is prayer only the human act of last resort? Does praying reflect anything more than the fact that all else has failed? Why do we say so frequently to people, “You will be in my prayers,” when we never stop to pray? Is it not our impotence in the face of life’s pain that draws us to pretend that we actually possess the power to make a difference, creating nothing more than a comfortable fantasy land in which we can hide? Is my experience, which tells me that loving, caring and sharing matter, actually real? Can prayer be defined as something other than this pious activity? Does it have any claim on reality? Is prayer a holy activity or is it a preparation for a time of engaging in a holy activity? Increasingly, I am moving to the latter conclusion. It is life that is holy. It is love that is life-giving. Having the courage to be all that I can be is the place where God and life come together for me. If that is so, is not living, loving and being the essence of prayer and the meaning of worship? When Paul enjoined us to “pray without ceasing” did he mean to engage the activity of praying unceasingly? Or did he mean that we are to see all of life as a prayer calling the world to enter that place where life, love and being reveal the meaning of God? Is Christianity not coming to the place where my “I” meets another’s “Thou” and in that moment God is present? I pray daily. In my own way, I bring before the eyes of my mind those I love and thus into my awareness of the holy in which my life seems to be lived. Do I expect miracles to occur, lives to be changed or wholeness suddenly to replace brokenness? No, but I do expect to be made more whole, to be set free to share my life more deeply with others, to be enabled to love beyond my boundaries and to watch the barriers that divide me from those I once avoided lowered. Prayer to me is the practice of the presence of God, the act of embracing transcendence and the conscious practice of sharing with another the gifts of living, loving and being. Can that understanding of prayer, so free of miracle and magic, make any real difference in our world? I believe it can, it does and it will. John Shelby Spong Question & Answer Clifford Hill of Wheaton, Illinois, writes: Question: I am a member of a United Methodist Church in Wheaton, Illinois. Over the years, I have taught many adult classes and would, in that process, include many of Bart Ehrman’s offerings in the Great Courses series. Currently, my class has six sessions of his course: After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, remaining and I had planned to present these this coming fall. I received a call from our Director of Care Minister, who is the scheduler for adult classes. She asked me to cancel this class because some persons, (unknown to me), but who are not members of the class, had complained about it. Earlier our senior pastor had mentioned to me that I should be “sensitive” to others’ feelings about this class and presumably, about Bart Ehrman, My question: What is your professional opinion about the credibility and qualifications of Professor Bart Ehrman and what is your opinion about his scholarship as evidenced in his books and in his Great Courses classes? Answer: Dear Cliff, I know Bart Ehrman and believe him to be a competent scholar of the first order. His expertise is in the period of early Christian history more than it is in scripture studies per se. I have listened to all of his classes in the Great Courses series and have appreciated his insights, controversial as some of them well may be. Dr. Ehrman challenges the popular, but not substantiated, assumption that there ever was such a thing as “Orthodox Christianity. He demonstrates, rather powerfully, that there were originally “many Christianities” long before what came to be called traditional orthodoxy emerged with power as “The One True Faith.” I suspect that what you are now hearing is not an objection to Bart Ehrman’s scholarship, but rather the fact that in one of his recent books, he stated that he was no longer a believer. He now calls himself an atheist. He has had an interesting history, starting in one of the most conservative and fundamentalist parts of the Christian Church. In my opinion, he is still processing his life experience. He has much to teach us all. No one has to agree with either his current faith position or with any of his conclusions; his scholarship is still impressive. In the book in which he said that he was no longer a believer, I have an endorsement on the back cover. In that endorsement I said I had come to a very different conclusion, but that I still had a great respect for his work. I do. John Shelby Spong Announcements [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/f332ff1f-215…]<http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…> Bishop Spong speaks at The American Cathedral in Paris on October 16, 2016 Click here for more information<http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…> _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net<mailto:Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net

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Salmon: On prayer
by William Salmon via OE 17 Sep '16

17 Sep '16

Colleagues-in-Dialogue: Spong is a prime member of the vanguard for contexting the future. The Order--et al--are those standing between the No Longer and the Not Yet. Unfortunately, the language used by Spong, and those like him, represents the worldview of the Renaissance Human; the give away is such phrases as, ". . .the act of embracing transcendence. . . " Such words imply a metaphysics that is the gift of Greek dualism and eventually Newtonian physics. Those born on the cusp of 1985 have no appreciation of such language. This is the reason that today's youth, and their parents, left the church, because their intuitions are based on transparency rather than on transcendence. Today's worldview embraces an inner awareness. The key praxis is to ask, "How do you experience. . . ?," instead of, "What do you know?" For instance, the provocative question is, "How do you experience God?" rather than the more traditional question, "What do we know about God?" The Head Trip answer is, "God is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent? Observe how these answers lead us into irrelevance. The Gut Trip answer is: "God is love?" "When was the last time you were loved?" "It is when my wife forgave me for being a fool." "Everyone knows what a fool is like, and what forgiveness is like." Theologically, this approach is experiential and existential. This exercise does not give us a definition of God, instead we know we stood in the presence of God; in God's shadow. It's late, and I'm off to bed! Inner Peace! Bill Salmon ----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Schlesinger via OE To: 'zbarley' ; 'Order Ecumenical Community' Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2016 10:04 AM Subject: Re: [Oe List ...][Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) Not following the disappointment – sounded like Spong was echoing the non-magical understanding of prayer. “These are little more than the delusions of yesterday that we are now called on to abandon.” It’s pretty clear that there are a lot of folk who would like a magically manipulated world and who ask for it. Friend of mine says ‘no gambler avoids superstition. How the cards are held in the hand must influence the random sequence of events!’ Luck, superstitious prayer, magic – or “the act of embracing transcendence and the conscious practice of sharing with another the gifts of living, loving and being.” Sounds a lot like the prayer short course from RS-1 to me. Bill Schlesinger From: OE [mailto:oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of zbarley via OE Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2016 8:50 AM To: James Wiegel; Order Ecumenical Community Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) Ken and I just talked about Spong's latest and are disappointed in him on this topic. I have trouble believing there are people who ask a Being in the sky to intervene. But then I have trouble with people who believe Trump. Thanks for the prayer words - we had good poets amongst us. Zoe Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: James Wiegel via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Date: 2016/09/17 7:56 AM (GMT-07:00) To: Ellie Stock <elliestock(a)aol.com>, Colleague Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: oe(a)wedgeblade.net Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) Trying to make sense of Spongs call for reformation and what is really there. Read this section on Prayer, remembered the prayer song. See below. Anyone recall the short courses on prayer from the RS1? PRAYER Tune: Aravah (Hebrew) When I see my life ever is torn And loved ones violated And my failures are daily reborn Then sorrow with heaven is weighted Yet I can gladly em- brace every hour And praise God’s inequity I can sing of my blessings that shower My joy inexpressible be. Now here I stand battered to and fro Now here I stand battered to and fro The chaos within yet surrounding I cry out my want and the lack that I know And power from with- out feel uplifting. The weight of the world on my shoulders I bear I echo the voices that cry The path of Mankind with my agony bent And my God I’ll fight on ‘til I die Jim Wiegel 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353 Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277 jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com "We are no longer living in an era of change. We are living in a change of era." Francis Upcoming public course opportunities click here http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=10 For online registration go to http://www.top-training.net The AZ ToP® Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday, 1-4 pm, starting again on Sept 5th at ACYR, 648 N. 5th Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85003 AICP Planners: 14.5 CM for all ToP® courses > On Sep 16, 2016, at 10:12, Ellie Stock via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: > > > > > > HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR > > Charting a New Reformation > Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) > Before prayer can be made real our understanding of God, coupled with our understanding of how the world works, must be newly defined. Before prayer can have meaning, it must be built on an honest sharing of life. Cornelia, the woman about whom I wrote last week, did that for me. Before prayer can be discussed in the age in which we live, it must be drained of its presumed manipulative magic. It must find expression in the reality of who we are, not in the details of what we do. These were the insights that my third story gave to me as I walked through what was probably the darkest period of my life, the years 1981-1989. The learning curve was steep; the depth of despair was real. I invite you now to enter that time period with me and to walk through that experience as I did. This narrative is true, personal and painful. I have spoken verbally of it before. I have not written about it. Doing so even now makes me feel quite vulnerable. > > Around Christmas of 1981, my first wife, Joan Lydia Ketner Spong, was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. She had never been fond of doctors and so had postponed seeing one until she felt her symptoms had become critical. She had discovered a lump in her breast much earlier and had decided to tell no one for a very long time. It grew very slowly causing her to assume, perhaps to hope, that it must be benign. It remained her secret. That December as the holidays came into focus, however, the tumor erupted externally and became a draining sore. When that occurred, I became alarmed and got her as quickly as I could to a doctor. After an examination and later a biopsy, we heard the verdict. She had a stage four malignancy. Immediate surgery was required and massive chemotherapy would have to follow the surgery. No guarantees were offered even then. In fact we were told that about two years of life might be all that we could reasonably expect. We sank into the shock of that diagnosis. > > At that time I was an active and fairly high-profile public figure as the bishop of Newark. We had been engaged in great controversies over the full acceptance in both church and society of gay, lesbian, transgender and bi-sexual persons. I was clearly identified in this fight and my name was widely recognized from press and television coverage. People in public life learn quickly that they really do not, perhaps cannot, have a private life. Within minutes, it seemed, the news of both my wife’s diagnosis and her prognosis spread until it seemed to me as if the whole world knew. From that day on, I never visited a congregation in my diocese for confirmation that prayers were not offered publicly for my wife and for me. Prayer groups all over New Jersey informed us that they were praying for us – some were Episcopal, some were Roman Catholic and some were ecumenical. The one thing they all appeared to have in common was that they knew of the two-year maximum boundary that presumably my wife and I were facing. I did not resent this invasion of our privacy. I was rather appreciative of their efforts, as was Joan. Their actions felt supportive and loving. In their own way, the people were telling us that they really cared for us and, in whatever way they could, they wanted to help. They were willing in this way to stand with us, to share in our pain and in our struggle. One never rejects love that is so freely offered, even when the form in which it comes might not be one’s particular style. So Joan and I were carried by this wave of love from those who reached out to us in what was clearly our time of need. > > The months passed and then the years began to mount. When we passed the two-year prediction date, and things were still going positively, I noticed that these prayer groups began to take credit for my wife’s longevity. In their letters to me, it almost sounded as if they believed that they had engaged the powers of evil in some profound contest that pitted them on God’s side, holding back God’s enemies. Their prayers, they suggested, were pushing back the advance of this demonic sickness. They were winning the battle and they felt good about their success. Once again, my response was not to debate the theological implications of their understanding of prayer, but simply to appreciate the level of caring that they were offering. It was, at least in its intention, sustaining. I could not help, however, in the darkness of each night to wonder about the implications of their understanding of prayer > > “Suppose,” I thought to myself during a particularly sleepless time, “that a member of the City of Newark’s sanitation department had a wife with cancer.” At that time, Newark, New Jersey, was either at or very near the top of the list of America’s poorest per capita cities. I tried to envision just who it was who might occupy the bottom tier of Newark’s socio-economic status system. My mind settled, whether rightly or wrongly, on the garbage collector working for Newark’s sanitation department. So I focused on him. > > In this long dark meditation, I wondered how many prayer groups would have added her name to their lists. How much public notice would her illness have achieved? If this couple went to church, perhaps that community might have been aware of their struggle, but would services have been interrupted with passionate petitions for healing? Would the gates of heaven have been stormed by massive number of prayers? Would God, I then wondered, let this man’s wife die more quickly than my wife? My high public profile and social prominence alone caused more prayers to be uttered for my wife than for his. Would those prayers be a factor, I wondered, in either healing or longevity? Does God operate on the basis of human status? If I believed that prayer worked in this way, I would immediately become an atheist! I could not possibly believe in such a deity. This capricious God would be demonic, it seemed to me. The cumulative power of many people praying existed in the case of my wife only because I was a fairly well known public figure. Is status a factor in what is thought of as the healing power of God? When John Paul II lingered on his death bed for so long, the whole world joined in prayer for him. Was that a factor in his long lingering death? When hurricanes barrel down on a population center like New Orleans, the cries of millions are lifted heavenward in prayer. Will the cumulative power of many prayers affect the course of a life, change the direction of a hurricane or alter the path of a disease? Is that what prayer does? If so, then prayer is a tool to be used by the mighty, the powerful and the well-known. If that is true then God clearly cares more for the rich and famous than God does for the poor, the forgotten and the unknown. Such a conclusion becomes theologically violent, absurd and even hate-filled. Whatever prayer means, it cannot be that. My wife lived for six and a half years from her diagnosis in December of 1981 to her death in August of 1988. In retrospect, I treasure that extension of time, but I did not fully understand then the gift that I was given. Life is like that. As St. Paul says, we see only “through a glass darkly.” > > So I put these stories with their varied and distinctive insights together. Then I seek to draw conclusions about what prayer means in the 21st century. Prayer is not and cannot be a petition from the weak to the all-powerful one to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Prayer does not bend God’s will to a new conclusion. Prayer does not bring a cure where there is no possibility of a cure. Prayer does not create miracles to which we can testify publicly. > > These are little more than the delusions of yesterday that we are now called on to abandon. They arose out of the childhood of our humanity. Today a new question emerges, which we must face with honesty. Is prayer only the human act of last resort? Does praying reflect anything more than the fact that all else has failed? Why do we say so frequently to people, “You will be in my prayers,” when we never stop to pray? Is it not our impotence in the face of life’s pain that draws us to pretend that we actually possess the power to make a difference, creating nothing more than a comfortable fantasy land in which we can hide? > > Is my experience, which tells me that loving, caring and sharing matter, actually real? Can prayer be defined as something other than this pious activity? Does it have any claim on reality? Is prayer a holy activity or is it a preparation for a time of engaging in a holy activity? Increasingly, I am moving to the latter conclusion. It is life that is holy. It is love that is life-giving. Having the courage to be all that I can be is the place where God and life come together for me. If that is so, is not living, loving and being the essence of prayer and the meaning of worship? When Paul enjoined us to “pray without ceasing” did he mean to engage the activity of praying unceasingly? Or did he mean that we are to see all of life as a prayer calling the world to enter that place where life, love and being reveal the meaning of God? Is Christianity not coming to the place where my “I” meets another’s “Thou” and in that moment God is present? > > I pray daily. In my own way, I bring before the eyes of my mind those I love and thus into my awareness of the holy in which my life seems to be lived. Do I expect miracles to occur, lives to be changed or wholeness suddenly to replace brokenness? No, but I do expect to be made more whole, to be set free to share my life more deeply with others, to be enabled to love beyond my boundaries and to watch the barriers that divide me from those I once avoided lowered. Prayer to me is the practice of the presence of God, the act of embracing transcendence and the conscious practice of sharing with another the gifts of living, loving and being. Can that understanding of prayer, so free of miracle and magic, make any real difference in our world? I believe it can, it does and it will. > > John Shelby Spong > > > Question & Answer > Clifford Hill of Wheaton, Illinois, writes: > > > Question: > I am a member of a United Methodist Church in Wheaton, Illinois. Over the years, I have taught many adult classes and would, in that process, include many of Bart Ehrman’s offerings in the Great Courses series. Currently, my class has six sessions of his course: After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, remaining and I had planned to present these this coming fall. I received a call from our Director of Care Minister, who is the scheduler for adult classes. She asked me to cancel this class because some persons, (unknown to me), but who are not members of the class, had complained about it. Earlier our senior pastor had mentioned to me that I sho ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2016.0.7797 / Virus Database: 4656/13036 - Release Date: 09/17/16

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Re: [Oe List ...] Spong and Prayer
by Susan Fertig via OE 17 Sep '16

17 Sep '16

What exactly is a "two-story" universe? Do you mean some people thinking of "up" and "down" or "sky" and "earth" when they speak of belief in a "personal God"? How silly. And how intellectually insulting to those of us who do believe, not in an "up there" and "down here" universe but in a supernatural Creator. I totally believe in a very personal God and in His supernatural nature and in afterlife. But God is very much in my life here and now. So I would ask again, what do all of you mean by a two-tier universe, and how does everyone presume to define that for other people or ascribe belief in it to people they've decided are part of that naive class of persons who believe something you don't consider real. Nothing two-tier about it. All pervasive, all-present. Susan Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Droid On Sep 17, 2016 7:18 PM, Dharmalingam Vinasithamby via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: That’s right, it was Captain Sully’s prayer that helped him land that plane. Without it, he would not have been present to the situation and in command of all his resources. All of us have been in moments of crisis, even if not as dramatic as Captain Sully’s, where we have called upon the full force of our consciousness and desired that we respond appropriately to save our neck and that of our fellow beings. Even those who “pray” to their god of a two-storey universe do engage in authentic prayer without knowing it. That RS1 short course on prayer is right on target. On Sunday, 18 September 2016, 2:51, Terry Bergdall via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: The movie "Sully" opened in movie theaters around the US last week. I was interested to see it because of an "earthrise" witness that I wrote on prayer seven years ago. I was trying to illustrate the RS-1 practice of grounding religious language in life experience. Given this dialogue initiated by Susan in response to Bishop Spong, I thought I'd re-post it again here. See below: PRAYER AND CAPTAIN SULLY, 9 April 2009 I just returned home from a trip to New York. As is typical when flying from LaGuardia, we had a spectacular view of the city’s skyscrapers. This time my fascination was greater than usual as I found myself looking for the spot where, in January, a plane like mine crash-landed into the Hudson River. You probably heard about Captain Sully and his plane’s encounter with a flock of geese, how its engines stopped shortly after take-off, his quick review of options, and his management of a crash from which every one of the 150+ passengers survived. As I looked down on the same river, I was reminded of an interview I heard shortly after this occurred. Someone asked Captain Sully “Did you pray while this was happening?” “No,” he said, “but I imagine there were some in the back taking care of it for me while I did the flying.” I may be overly presumptuous but both the question and answer seem to be predicated on a popular image of prayer whereby one’s self is put in the fore seeking favors from a supernatural entity and, in this case, pleading for an escape from a life-threatening danger. I have no doubt that everyone on that plane was experiencing a prayerful moment, but genuine prayer is something far different from this counterfeit perception. Prayer means acknowledging and bowing my head to the sheer awesomeness of a prevailing mystery that is totally beyond myself. It is the mystery that I first recognized in the questions of my childhood -- why I am here? why must I die? what should I do? what is the purpose of life? I encounter unmitigated mystery precisely because these questions are ultimately unanswered. Genuine prayer allows us to grapple with the silence rather than fill the void. Prayer is standing before that reality (the name that we cannot know according to the ancient Israelites, i.e., “God”) and framing everyday actions, as well as responses to extreme circumstances, in a life-affirming comprehensive context. It is never an escape. “I don’t pray to change God,” C.S. Lewis is quoted as saying, “I pray to change myself.” Captain Sully’s actions make me think that he was in a very profound state of prayer as he landed that plane. He was intensely focused on acknowledging the real situation while bringing all of his experience and knowledge to bear, including extraordinary resources to remain calm in a moment of extreme crisis. Given popular perceptions, I can also appreciate his unwillingness to call it prayer. Which raises questions for me. Most of the time, topics of an overt religious nature, like prayer, never even come up in my daily encounters. When they do, it seems that about half of the people I meet are more-or-less content with the shallowness of popular religion while the other considers it to be totally irrelevant. This, of course, is a gross oversimplification and there is a lot of grey in between but it highlights a quandary. How do I authentically engage everyone, religious and secular alike, to celebrate and act upon both the possibilities of life and its overwhelming limits? It is even more complex when different religious traditions are thrown into the mix. No matter how much I work on resolving this, there is no simple answer. It is in wrestling with life’s questions that we make our prayers. Though he’d probably be surprised to hear it, I’m grateful today for Captain Sully calling me to mine. Amen. _______________________________________________ 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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Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded)
by laurelcg＠aol.com via OE 17 Sep '16

17 Sep '16

Love This quote, Frank Jann Sent from my LG Escape2, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone ------ Original message------From: Frank Knutson via OE Date: Sat, Sep 17, 2016 8:23 AMTo: Randy Williams;Order Ecumenical ICA-USA;Subject:Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) Great story . . . God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason. ~Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, p. 56 ❤ Frank On Sep 17, 2016, at 8:20 AM, Randy Williams via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Jim, Zoe and all,I think the prayer short course was something about asking God to do good things for you being Baalism and something about making a decision and affirming it with "amen." In the NRM talk on prayer we referred to it as "the action before the action." To that point, several years ago I visited the home of Philip Simmons in Charleston, SC. Mr, Simmons, now deceased, was the African-American artist who designed and built the gates on many of the Charleston gardens and the gate to the entry of the Smithsonian Institute in DC as well. With the money he had made over the years he had sent all his grandchildren to college, and then all the neighborhood children. On a wall in his modest white-frame home Mr. Simmons had a picture of an old black gentleman, much like himself, kneeling beside the bed in prayer. The caption under the picture was, "If you think God doesn't answer prayer, then get off your knees and do something." That's the new prayer short course for me.Randy Sent from my iPad On Sep 17, 2016, at 9:49 AM, zbarley via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: Ken and I just talked about Spong's latest and are disappointed in him on this topic. I have trouble believing there are people who ask a Being in the sky to intervene. But then I have trouble with people who believe Trump. Thanks for the prayer words - we had good poets amongst us. Zoe Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: James Wiegel via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Date: 2016/09/17 7:56 AM (GMT-07:00) To: Ellie Stock <elliestock(a)aol.com>, Colleague Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: oe(a)wedgeblade.net Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) Trying to make sense of Spongs call for reformation and what is really there. Read this section on Prayer, remembered the prayer song. See below. Anyone recall the short courses on prayer from the RS1? PRAYER Tune: Aravah (Hebrew) When I see my life ever is torn And loved ones violated And my failures are daily reborn Then sorrow with heaven is weighted Yet I can gladly em- brace every hour And praise God’s inequity I can sing of my blessings that shower My joy inexpressible be. Now here I stand battered to and fro Now here I stand battered to and fro The chaos within yet surrounding I cry out my want and the lack that I know And power from with- out feel uplifting. The weight of the world on my shoulders I bear I echo the voices that cry The path of Mankind with my agony bent And my God I’ll fight on ‘til I die Jim Wiegel 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353 Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277 jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com "We are no longer living in an era of change. We are living in a change of era." Francis Upcoming public course opportunities click here http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=10 For online registration go to http://www.top-training.net The AZ ToP® Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday, 1-4 pm, starting again on Sept 5th at ACYR, 648 N. 5th Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85003 AICP Planners: 14.5 CM for all ToP® courses > On Sep 16, 2016, at 10:12, Ellie Stock via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: > > > > > > HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR > > Charting a New Reformation > Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) > Before prayer can be made real our understanding of God, coupled with our understanding of how the world works, must be newly defined. Before prayer can have meaning, it must be built on an honest sharing of life. Cornelia, the woman about whom I wrote last week, did that for me. Before prayer can be discussed in the age in which we live, it must be drained of its presumed manipulative magic. It must find expression in the reality of who we are, not in the details of what we do. These were the insights that my third story gave to me as I walked through what was probably the darkest period of my life, the years 1981-1989. The learning curve was steep; the depth of despair was real. I invite you now to enter that time period with me and to walk through that experience as I did. This narrative is true, personal and painful. I have spoken verbally of it before. I have not written about it. Doing so even now makes me feel quite vulnerable. > > Around Christmas of 1981, my first wife, Joan Lydia Ketner Spong, was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. She had never been fond of doctors and so had postponed seeing one until she felt her symptoms had become critical. She had discovered a lump in her breast much earlier and had decided to tell no one for a very long time. It grew very slowly causing her to assume, perhaps to hope, that it must be benign. It remained her secret. That December as the holidays came into focus, however, the tumor erupted externally and became a draining sore. When that occurred, I became alarmed and got her as quickly as I could to a doctor. After an examination and later a biopsy, we heard the verdict. She had a stage four malignancy. Immediate surgery was required and massive chemotherapy would have to follow the surgery. No guarantees were offered even then. In fact we were told that about two years of life might be all that we could reasonably expect. We sank into the shock of that diagnosis. > > At that time I was an active and fairly high-profile public figure as the bishop of Newark. We had been engaged in great controversies over the full acceptance in both church and society of gay, lesbian, transgender and bi-sexual persons. I was clearly identified in this fight and my name was widely recognized from press and television coverage. People in public life learn quickly that they really do not, perhaps cannot, have a private life. Within minutes, it seemed, the news of both my wife’s diagnosis and her prognosis spread until it seemed to me as if the whole world knew. From that day on, I never visited a congregation in my diocese for confirmation that prayers were not offered publicly for my wife and for me. Prayer groups all over New Jersey informed us that they were praying for us – some were Episcopal, some were Roman Catholic and some were ecumenical. The one thing they all appeared to have in common was that they knew of the two-year maximum boundary that presumably my wife and I were facing. I did not resent this invasion of our privacy. I was rather appreciative of their efforts, as was Joan. Their actions felt supportive and loving. In their own way, the people were telling us that they really cared for us and, in whatever way they could, they wanted to help. They were willing in this way to stand with us, to share in our pain and in our struggle. One never rejects love that is so freely offered, even when the form in which it comes might not be one’s particular style. So Joan and I were carried by this wave of love from those who reached out to us in what was clearly our time of need. > > The months passed and then the years began to mount. When we passed the two-year prediction date, and things were still going positively, I noticed that these prayer groups began to take credit for my wife’s longevity. In their letters to me, it almost sounded as if they believed that they had engaged the powers of evil in some profound contest that pitted them on God’s side, holding back God’s enemies. Their prayers, they suggested, were pushing back the advance of this demonic sickness. They were winning the battle and they felt good about their success. Once again, my response was not to debate the theological implications of their understanding of prayer, but simply to appreciate the level of caring that they were offering. It was, at least in its intention, sustaining. I could not help, however, in the darkness of each night to wonder about the implications of their understanding of prayer > > “Suppose,” I thought to myself during a particularly sleepless time, “that a member of the City of Newark’s sanitation department had a wife with cancer.” At that time, Newark, New Jersey, was either at or very near the top of the list of America’s poorest per capita cities. I tried to envision just who it was who might occupy the bottom tier of Newark’s socio-economic status system. My mind settled, whether rightly or wrongly, on the garbage collector working for Newark’s sanitation department. So I focused on him. > > In this long dark meditation, I wondered how many prayer groups would have added her name to their lists. How much public notice would her illness have achieved? If this couple went to church, perhaps that community might have been aware of their struggle, but would services have been interrupted with passionate petitions for healing? Would the gates of heaven have been stormed by massive number of prayers? Would God, I then wondered, let this man’s wife die more quickly than my wife? My high public profile and social prominence alone caused more prayers to be uttered for my wife than for his. Would those prayers be a factor, I wondered, in either healing or longevity? Does God operate on the basis of human status? If I believed that prayer worked in this way, I would immediately become an atheist! I could not possibly believe in such a deity. This capricious God would be demonic, it seemed to me. The cumulative power of many people praying existed in the case of my wife only because I was a fairly well known public figure. Is status a factor in what is thought of as the healing power of God? When John Paul II lingered on his death bed for so long, the whole world joined in prayer for him. Was that a factor in his long lingering death? When hurricanes barrel down on a population center like New Orleans, the cries of millions are lifted heavenward in prayer. Will the cumulative power of many prayers affect the course of a life, change the direction of a hurricane or alter the path of a disease? Is that what prayer does? If so, then prayer is a tool to be used by the mighty, the powerful and the well-known. If that is true then God clearly cares more for the rich and famous than God does for the poor, the forgotten and the unknown. Such a conclusion becomes theologically violent, absurd and even hate-filled. Whatever prayer means, it cannot be that. My wife lived for six and a half years from her diagnosis in December of 1981 to her death in August of 1988. In retrospect, I treasure that extension of time, but I did not fully understand then the gift that I was given. Life is like that. As St. Paul says, we see only “through a glass darkly.” > > So I put these stories with their varied and distinctive insights together. Then I seek to draw conclusions about what prayer means in the 21st century. Prayer is not and cannot be a petition from the weak to the all-powerful one to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Prayer does not bend God’s will to a new conclusion. Prayer does not bring a cure where there is no possibility of a cure. Prayer does not create miracles to which we can testify publicly. > > These are little more than the delusions of yesterday that we are now called on to abandon. They arose out of the childhood of our humanity. Today a new question emerges, which we must face with honesty. Is prayer only the human act of last resort? Does praying reflect anything more than the fact that all else has failed? Why do we say so frequently to people, “You will be in my prayers,” when we never stop to pray? Is it not our impotence in the face of life’s pain that draws us to pretend that we actually possess the power to make a difference, creating nothing more than a comfortable fantasy land in which we can hide? > > Is my experience, which tells me that loving, caring and sharing matter, actually real? Can prayer be defined as something other than this pious activity? Does it have any claim on reality? Is prayer a holy activity or is it a preparation for a time of engaging in a holy activity? Increasingly, I am moving to the latter conclusion. It is life that is holy. It is love that is life-giving. Having the courage to be all that I can be is the place where God and life come together for me. If that is so, is not living, loving and being the essence of prayer and the meaning of worship? When Paul enjoined us to “pray without ceasing” did he mean to engage the activity of praying unceasingly? Or did he mean that we are to see all of life as a prayer calling the world to enter that place where life, love and being reveal the meaning of God? Is Christianity not coming to the place where my “I” meets another’s “Thou” and in that moment God is present? > > I pray daily. In my own way, I bring before the eyes of my mind those I love and thus into my awareness of the holy in which my life seems to be lived. Do I expect miracles to occur, lives to be changed or wholeness suddenly to replace brokenness? No, but I do expect to be made more whole, to be set free to share my life more deeply with others, to be enabled to love beyond my boundaries and to watch the barriers that divide me from those I once avoided lowered. Prayer to me is the practice of the presence of God, the act of embracing transcendence and the conscious practice of sharing with another the gifts of living, loving and being. Can that understanding of prayer, so free of miracle and magic, make any real difference in our world? I believe it can, it does and it will. > > John Shelby Spong > > > Question & Answer > Clifford Hill of Wheaton, Illinois, writes: > > > Question: > I am a member of a United Methodist Church in Wheaton, Illinois. Over the years, I have taught many adult classes and would, in that process, include many of Bart Ehrman’s offerings in the Great Courses series. Currently, my class has six sessions of his course: After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, remaining and I had planned to present these this coming fall. I received a call from our Director of Care Minister, who is the scheduler for adult classes. She asked me to cancel this class because some persons, (unknown to me), but who are not members of the class, had complained about it. Earlier our senior pastor had mentioned to me that I sho_______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded)
by zbarley via OE 17 Sep '16

17 Sep '16

Ken and I just talked about Spong's latest and are disappointed in him on this topic. I have trouble believing there are people who ask a Being in the sky to intervene. But then I have trouble with people who believe Trump. Thanks for the prayer words - we had good poets amongst us. Zoe Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: James Wiegel via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Date: 2016/09/17 7:56 AM (GMT-07:00) To: Ellie Stock <elliestock(a)aol.com>, Colleague Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: oe(a)wedgeblade.net Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) Trying to make sense of Spongs call for reformation and what is really there. Read this section on Prayer, remembered the prayer song. See below. Anyone recall the short courses on prayer from the RS1? PRAYER Tune: Aravah (Hebrew) When I see my life ever is torn And loved ones violated And my failures are daily reborn Then sorrow with heaven is weighted Yet I can gladly em- brace every hour And praise God’s inequity I can sing of my blessings that shower My joy inexpressible be. Now here I stand battered to and fro Now here I stand battered to and fro The chaos within yet surrounding I cry out my want and the lack that I know And power from with- out feel uplifting. The weight of the world on my shoulders I bear I echo the voices that cry The path of Mankind with my agony bent And my God I’ll fight on ‘til I die Jim Wiegel 401 North Beverly Way, Tolleson, Arizona 85353 Tel. 011-623-936-8671 or 011-623-363-3277 jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com www.partnersinparticipation.com "We are no longer living in an era of change. We are living in a change of era." Francis Upcoming public course opportunities click here http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=10 For online registration go to http://www.top-training.net The AZ ToP® Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday, 1-4 pm, starting again on Sept 5th at ACYR, 648 N. 5th Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85003 AICP Planners: 14.5 CM for all ToP® courses > On Sep 16, 2016, at 10:12, Ellie Stock via Dialogue <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote: > > > > > > HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR > > Charting a New Reformation > Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded) > Before prayer can be made real our understanding of God, coupled with our understanding of how the world works, must be newly defined. Before prayer can have meaning, it must be built on an honest sharing of life. Cornelia, the woman about whom I wrote last week, did that for me. Before prayer can be discussed in the age in which we live, it must be drained of its presumed manipulative magic. It must find expression in the reality of who we are, not in the details of what we do. These were the insights that my third story gave to me as I walked through what was probably the darkest period of my life, the years 1981-1989. The learning curve was steep; the depth of despair was real. I invite you now to enter that time period with me and to walk through that experience as I did. This narrative is true, personal and painful. I have spoken verbally of it before. I have not written about it. Doing so even now makes me feel quite vulnerable. > > Around Christmas of 1981, my first wife, Joan Lydia Ketner Spong, was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. She had never been fond of doctors and so had postponed seeing one until she felt her symptoms had become critical. She had discovered a lump in her breast much earlier and had decided to tell no one for a very long time. It grew very slowly causing her to assume, perhaps to hope, that it must be benign. It remained her secret. That December as the holidays came into focus, however, the tumor erupted externally and became a draining sore. When that occurred, I became alarmed and got her as quickly as I could to a doctor. After an examination and later a biopsy, we heard the verdict. She had a stage four malignancy. Immediate surgery was required and massive chemotherapy would have to follow the surgery. No guarantees were offered even then. In fact we were told that about two years of life might be all that we could reasonably expect. We sank into the shock of that diagnosis. > > At that time I was an active and fairly high-profile public figure as the bishop of Newark. We had been engaged in great controversies over the full acceptance in both church and society of gay, lesbian, transgender and bi-sexual persons. I was clearly identified in this fight and my name was widely recognized from press and television coverage. People in public life learn quickly that they really do not, perhaps cannot, have a private life. Within minutes, it seemed, the news of both my wife’s diagnosis and her prognosis spread until it seemed to me as if the whole world knew. From that day on, I never visited a congregation in my diocese for confirmation that prayers were not offered publicly for my wife and for me. Prayer groups all over New Jersey informed us that they were praying for us – some were Episcopal, some were Roman Catholic and some were ecumenical. The one thing they all appeared to have in common was that they knew of the two-year maximum boundary that presumably my wife and I were facing. I did not resent this invasion of our privacy. I was rather appreciative of their efforts, as was Joan. Their actions felt supportive and loving. In their own way, the people were telling us that they really cared for us and, in whatever way they could, they wanted to help. They were willing in this way to stand with us, to share in our pain and in our struggle. One never rejects love that is so freely offered, even when the form in which it comes might not be one’s particular style. So Joan and I were carried by this wave of love from those who reached out to us in what was clearly our time of need. > > The months passed and then the years began to mount. When we passed the two-year prediction date, and things were still going positively, I noticed that these prayer groups began to take credit for my wife’s longevity. In their letters to me, it almost sounded as if they believed that they had engaged the powers of evil in some profound contest that pitted them on God’s side, holding back God’s enemies. Their prayers, they suggested, were pushing back the advance of this demonic sickness. They were winning the battle and they felt good about their success. Once again, my response was not to debate the theological implications of their understanding of prayer, but simply to appreciate the level of caring that they were offering. It was, at least in its intention, sustaining. I could not help, however, in the darkness of each night to wonder about the implications of their understanding of prayer > > “Suppose,” I thought to myself during a particularly sleepless time, “that a member of the City of Newark’s sanitation department had a wife with cancer.” At that time, Newark, New Jersey, was either at or very near the top of the list of America’s poorest per capita cities. I tried to envision just who it was who might occupy the bottom tier of Newark’s socio-economic status system. My mind settled, whether rightly or wrongly, on the garbage collector working for Newark’s sanitation department. So I focused on him. > > In this long dark meditation, I wondered how many prayer groups would have added her name to their lists. How much public notice would her illness have achieved? If this couple went to church, perhaps that community might have been aware of their struggle, but would services have been interrupted with passionate petitions for healing? Would the gates of heaven have been stormed by massive number of prayers? Would God, I then wondered, let this man’s wife die more quickly than my wife? My high public profile and social prominence alone caused more prayers to be uttered for my wife than for his. Would those prayers be a factor, I wondered, in either healing or longevity? Does God operate on the basis of human status? If I believed that prayer worked in this way, I would immediately become an atheist! I could not possibly believe in such a deity. This capricious God would be demonic, it seemed to me. The cumulative power of many people praying existed in the case of my wife only because I was a fairly well known public figure. Is status a factor in what is thought of as the healing power of God? When John Paul II lingered on his death bed for so long, the whole world joined in prayer for him. Was that a factor in his long lingering death? When hurricanes barrel down on a population center like New Orleans, the cries of millions are lifted heavenward in prayer. Will the cumulative power of many prayers affect the course of a life, change the direction of a hurricane or alter the path of a disease? Is that what prayer does? If so, then prayer is a tool to be used by the mighty, the powerful and the well-known. If that is true then God clearly cares more for the rich and famous than God does for the poor, the forgotten and the unknown. Such a conclusion becomes theologically violent, absurd and even hate-filled. Whatever prayer means, it cannot be that. My wife lived for six and a half years from her diagnosis in December of 1981 to her death in August of 1988. In retrospect, I treasure that extension of time, but I did not fully understand then the gift that I was given. Life is like that. As St. Paul says, we see only “through a glass darkly.” > > So I put these stories with their varied and distinctive insights together. Then I seek to draw conclusions about what prayer means in the 21st century. Prayer is not and cannot be a petition from the weak to the all-powerful one to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Prayer does not bend God’s will to a new conclusion. Prayer does not bring a cure where there is no possibility of a cure. Prayer does not create miracles to which we can testify publicly. > > These are little more than the delusions of yesterday that we are now called on to abandon. They arose out of the childhood of our humanity. Today a new question emerges, which we must face with honesty. Is prayer only the human act of last resort? Does praying reflect anything more than the fact that all else has failed? Why do we say so frequently to people, “You will be in my prayers,” when we never stop to pray? Is it not our impotence in the face of life’s pain that draws us to pretend that we actually possess the power to make a difference, creating nothing more than a comfortable fantasy land in which we can hide? > > Is my experience, which tells me that loving, caring and sharing matter, actually real? Can prayer be defined as something other than this pious activity? Does it have any claim on reality? Is prayer a holy activity or is it a preparation for a time of engaging in a holy activity? Increasingly, I am moving to the latter conclusion. It is life that is holy. It is love that is life-giving. Having the courage to be all that I can be is the place where God and life come together for me. If that is so, is not living, loving and being the essence of prayer and the meaning of worship? When Paul enjoined us to “pray without ceasing” did he mean to engage the activity of praying unceasingly? Or did he mean that we are to see all of life as a prayer calling the world to enter that place where life, love and being reveal the meaning of God? Is Christianity not coming to the place where my “I” meets another’s “Thou” and in that moment God is present? > > I pray daily. In my own way, I bring before the eyes of my mind those I love and thus into my awareness of the holy in which my life seems to be lived. Do I expect miracles to occur, lives to be changed or wholeness suddenly to replace brokenness? No, but I do expect to be made more whole, to be set free to share my life more deeply with others, to be enabled to love beyond my boundaries and to watch the barriers that divide me from those I once avoided lowered. Prayer to me is the practice of the presence of God, the act of embracing transcendence and the conscious practice of sharing with another the gifts of living, loving and being. Can that understanding of prayer, so free of miracle and magic, make any real difference in our world? I believe it can, it does and it will. > > John Shelby Spong > > > Question & Answer > Clifford Hill of Wheaton, Illinois, writes: > > > Question: > I am a member of a United Methodist Church in Wheaton, Illinois. Over the years, I have taught many adult classes and would, in that process, include many of Bart Ehrman’s offerings in the Great Courses series. Currently, my class has six sessions of his course: After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, remaining and I had planned to present these this coming fall. I received a call from our Director of Care Minister, who is the scheduler for adult classes. She asked me to cancel this class because some persons, (unknown to me), but who are not members of the class, had complained about it. Earlier our senior pastor had mentioned to me that I sho

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9/16/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded)
by Ellie Stock via OE 17 Sep '16

17 Sep '16

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} .aolReplacedBody #aolmail_templateContainer,.aolReplacedBody .aolmail_bodyContent{ background-color:#ffffff; } .aolReplacedBody .aolmail_bodyContent div a:link,.aolReplacedBody .aolmail_bodyContent div a:visited{ color:#4487cf; }</style> <center> <table id="aolmail_backgroundTable" style="margin: 0;padding: 0;background-color: #ffffff;height: 100% !important;width: 100% !important;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" height="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table id="aolmail_templatePreheader" style="background-color: #ffffff;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td class="aolmail_preheaderContent" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #505050;font-family: Arial;font-size: 10px;line-height: 100%;text-align: left;"> </div> </td> <td valign="top" width="190"> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table id="aolmail_templateContainer" style="border: 1px solid #4487cf;background-color: #ffffff;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table id="aolmail_templateHeader" style="background-color: #D8E2EA;border-bottom: 0;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td class="aolmail_headerContent" style="color: #202020;font-family: Arial;font-size: 34px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;padding: 0;text-align: center;vertical-align: middle;"> <img alt="" style="margin: 0;padding: 0;max-width: 600px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;height: auto;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;" border="0" src="http://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/newsletter_he…"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="aolmail_headerNavigation" valign="top"> <h5 style="color: #202020;display: block;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 15px;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;text-transform: uppercase;"> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">Homepage</a> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">My Profile</a> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">Essay Archive</a> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…">Message Boards</a> <a style="color: #4487cf;text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">Calendar</a></h5> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table id="aolmail_templateBody" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td class="aolmail_bodyContent" style="background-color: #ffffff;" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h1 style="color: #003d4a;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 34px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Charting a New Reformation</h1> <h2 class="aolmail_null" style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded)</h2> <p>Before prayer can be made real our understanding of God, coupled with our understanding of how the world works, must be newly defined. Before prayer can have meaning, it must be built on an honest sharing of life. Cornelia, the woman about whom I wrote last week, did that for me. Before prayer can be discussed in the age in which we live, it must be drained of its presumed manipulative magic. It must find expression in the reality of who we are, not in the details of what we do. These were the insights that my third story gave to me as I walked through what was probably the darkest period of my life, the years 1981-1989. The learning curve was steep; the depth of despair was real. I invite you now to enter that time period with me and to walk through that experience as I did. This narrative is true, personal and painful. I have spoken verbally of it before. I have not written about it. Doing so even now makes me feel quite vulnerable.</p> <p>Around Christmas of 1981, my first wife, Joan Lydia Ketner Spong, was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. She had never been fond of doctors and so had postponed seeing one until she felt her symptoms had become critical. She had discovered a lump in her breast much earlier and had decided to tell no one for a very long time. It grew very slowly causing her to assume, perhaps to hope, that it must be benign. It remained her secret. That December as the holidays came into focus, however, the tumor erupted externally and became a draining sore. When that occurred, I became alarmed and got her as quickly as I could to a doctor. After an examination and later a biopsy, we heard the verdict. She had a stage four malignancy. Immediate surgery was required and massive chemotherapy would have to follow the surgery. No guarantees were offered even then. In fact we were told that about two years of life might be all that we could reasonably expect. We sank into the shock of that diagnosis.</p> <p>At that time I was an active and fairly high-profile public figure as the bishop of Newark. We had been engaged in great controversies over the full acceptance in both church and society of gay, lesbian, transgender and bi-sexual persons. I was clearly identified in this fight and my name was widely recognized from press and television coverage. People in public life learn quickly that they really do not, perhaps cannot, have a private life. Within minutes, it seemed, the news of both my wife’s diagnosis and her prognosis spread until it seemed to me as if the whole world knew. From that day on, I never visited a congregation in my diocese for confirmation that prayers were not offered publicly for my wife and for me. Prayer groups all over New Jersey informed us that they were praying for us – some were Episcopal, some were Roman Catholic and some were ecumenical. The one thing they all appeared to have in common was that they knew of the two-year maximum boundary that presumably my wife and I were facing. I did not resent this invasion of our privacy. I was rather appreciative of their efforts, as was Joan. Their actions felt supportive and loving. In their own way, the people were telling us that they really cared for us and, in whatever way they could, they wanted to help. They were willing in this way to stand with us, to share in our pain and in our struggle. One never rejects love that is so freely offered, even when the form in which it comes might not be one’s particular style. So Joan and I were carried by this wave of love from those who reached out to us in what was clearly our time of need.</p> <p>The months passed and then the years began to mount. When we passed the two-year prediction date, and things were still going positively, I noticed that these prayer groups began to take credit for my wife’s longevity. In their letters to me, it almost sounded as if they believed that they had engaged the powers of evil in some profound contest that pitted them on God’s side, holding back God’s enemies. Their prayers, they suggested, were pushing back the advance of this demonic sickness. They were winning the battle and they felt good about their success. Once again, my response was not to debate the theological implications of their understanding of prayer, but simply to appreciate the level of caring that they were offering. It was, at least in its intention, sustaining. I could not help, however, in the darkness of each night to wonder about the implications of their understanding of prayer</p> <p>“Suppose,” I thought to myself during a particularly sleepless time, “that a member of the City of Newark’s sanitation department had a wife with cancer.” At that time, Newark, New Jersey, was either at or very near the top of the list of America’s poorest per capita cities. I tried to envision just who it was who might occupy the bottom tier of Newark’s socio-economic status system. My mind settled, whether rightly or wrongly, on the garbage collector working for Newark’s sanitation department. So I focused on him.</p> <p>In this long dark meditation, I wondered how many prayer groups would have added her name to their lists. How much public notice would her illness have achieved? If this couple went to church, perhaps that community might have been aware of their struggle, but would services have been interrupted with passionate petitions for healing? Would the gates of heaven have been stormed by massive number of prayers? Would God, I then wondered, let this man’s wife die more quickly than my wife? My high public profile and social prominence alone caused more prayers to be uttered for my wife than for his. Would those prayers be a factor, I wondered, in either healing or longevity? Does God operate on the basis of human status? If I believed that prayer worked in this way, I would immediately become an atheist! I could not possibly believe in such a deity. This capricious God would be demonic, it seemed to me. The cumulative power of many people praying existed in the case of my wife only because I was a fairly well known public figure. Is status a factor in what is thought of as the healing power of God? When John Paul II lingered on his death bed for so long, the whole world joined in prayer for him. Was that a factor in his long lingering death? When hurricanes barrel down on a population center like New Orleans, the cries of millions are lifted heavenward in prayer. Will the cumulative power of many prayers affect the course of a life, change the direction of a hurricane or alter the path of a disease? Is that what prayer does? If so, then prayer is a tool to be used by the mighty, the powerful and the well-known. If that is true then God clearly cares more for the rich and famous than God does for the poor, the forgotten and the unknown. Such a conclusion becomes theologically violent, absurd and even hate-filled. Whatever prayer means, it cannot be that. My wife lived for six and a half years from her diagnosis in December of 1981 to her death in August of 1988. In retrospect, I treasure that extension of time, but I did not fully understand then the gift that I was given. Life is like that. As St. Paul says, we see only “through a glass darkly.”</p> <p>So I put these stories with their varied and distinctive insights together. Then I seek to draw conclusions about what prayer means in the 21st century. Prayer is not and cannot be a petition from the weak to the all-powerful one to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Prayer does not bend God’s will to a new conclusion. Prayer does not bring a cure where there is no possibility of a cure. Prayer does not create miracles to which we can testify publicly.</p> <p>These are little more than the delusions of yesterday that we are now called on to abandon. They arose out of the childhood of our humanity. Today a new question emerges, which we must face with honesty. Is prayer only the human act of last resort? Does praying reflect anything more than the fact that all else has failed? Why do we say so frequently to people, “You will be in my prayers,” when we never stop to pray? Is it not our impotence in the face of life’s pain that draws us to pretend that we actually possess the power to make a difference, creating nothing more than a comfortable fantasy land in which we can hide?</p> <p>Is my experience, which tells me that loving, caring and sharing matter, actually real? Can prayer be defined as something other than this pious activity? Does it have any claim on reality? Is prayer a holy activity or is it a preparation for a time of engaging in a holy activity? Increasingly, I am moving to the latter conclusion. It is life that is holy. It is love that is life-giving. Having the courage to be all that I can be is the place where God and life come together for me. If that is so, is not living, loving and being the essence of prayer and the meaning of worship? When Paul enjoined us to “pray without ceasing” did he mean to engage the activity of praying unceasingly? Or did he mean that we are to see all of life as a prayer calling the world to enter that place where life, love and being reveal the meaning of God? Is Christianity not coming to the place where my “I” meets another’s “Thou” and in that moment God is present?</p> <p>I pray daily. In my own way, I bring before the eyes of my mind those I love and thus into my awareness of the holy in which my life seems to be lived. Do I expect miracles to occur, lives to be changed or wholeness suddenly to replace brokenness? No, but I do expect to be made more whole, to be set free to share my life more deeply with others, to be enabled to love beyond my boundaries and to watch the barriers that divide me from those I once avoided lowered. Prayer to me is the practice of the presence of God, the act of embracing transcendence and the conscious practice of sharing with another the gifts of living, loving and being. Can that understanding of prayer, so free of miracle and magic, make any real difference in our world? I believe it can, it does and it will.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong</p> <p> </p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question & Answer</h2> <p><span style="font-size:18px">Clifford Hill of Wheaton, Illinois, writes:</span> </p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Question:</h4> <p>I am a member of a United Methodist Church in Wheaton, Illinois. Over the years, I have taught many adult classes and would, in that process, include many of Bart Ehrman’s offerings in the Great Courses series. Currently, my class has six sessions of his course: After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, remaining and I had planned to present these this coming fall. I received a call from our Director of Care Minister, who is the scheduler for adult classes. She asked me to cancel this class because some persons, (unknown to me), but who are not members of the class, had complained about it. Earlier our senior pastor had mentioned to me that I should be “sensitive” to others’ feelings about this class and presumably, about Bart Ehrman,</p> <p>My question: What is your professional opinion about the credibility and qualifications of Professor Bart Ehrman and what is your opinion about his scholarship as evidenced in his books and in his Great Courses classes?</p> <p> </p> <h4 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 22px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Answer:</h4> <p>Dear Cliff,</p> <p>I know Bart Ehrman and believe him to be a competent scholar of the first order. His expertise is in the period of early Christian history more than it is in scripture studies per se. I have listened to all of his classes in the Great Courses series and have appreciated his insights, controversial as some of them well may be. Dr. Ehrman challenges the popular, but not substantiated, assumption that there ever was such a thing as “Orthodox Christianity. He demonstrates, rather powerfully, that there were originally “many Christianities” long before what came to be called traditional orthodoxy emerged with power as “The One True Faith.”</p> <p>I suspect that what you are now hearing is not an objection to Bart Ehrman’s scholarship, but rather the fact that in one of his recent books, he stated that he was no longer a believer. He now calls himself an atheist. He has had an interesting history, starting in one of the most conservative and fundamentalist parts of the Christian Church. In my opinion, he is still processing his life experience. He has much to teach us all. No one has to agree with either his current faith position or with any of his conclusions; his scholarship is still impressive. In the book in which he said that he was no longer a believer, I have an endorsement on the back cover. In that endorsement I said I had come to a very different conclusion, but that I still had a great respect for his work. I do.</p> <p>John Shelby Spong </p> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"> <div style="color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;text-align: left;"> <h2 style="color: #4487cf;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 30px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;">Announcements</h2> <div style="text-align: center;color: #000000;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 16px;line-height: 150%;"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb23…"><img style="width: 500px;height: 201px;margin: 0px;border: none;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 100%;outline: none;text-decoration: none;text-transform: capitalize;display: inline;" align="none" width="500" height="201" src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/b51b9cf441b059bb232418480/images/f332ff1f-215…"></a> </div> <h1 class="aolmail_mc-toc-title" style="color: #003d4a;display: block;font-family: Georgia;font-size: 34px;font-weight: normal;line-height: 100%;margin-top: 0;margin-right: 0;margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 0;text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:26px"><span style="color:#000000">Bishop Spong speaks at The American Cathedral in Paris on October 16, 2016</span></span></h1> <span style="font-size:20px"><a target="_blank" style="color: #4487cf;font-weight: normal;text-decoration: underline;" href="http://johnshelbyspong.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb2…">Click here for more information</a></span></div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <table id="aolmail_templateFooter" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border-top: 0;" border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td class="aolmail_footerContent" valign="top"> <table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td colspan="2" id="aolmail_social" style="background-color: #FAFAFA;border: 0;" valign="middle"> <div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" id="aolmail_utility" style="background-color: #FDFDFD;border: 1px dashed #d3d3d3;" valign="middle"><div style="color: #707070;font-family: Arial;font-size: 12px;line-height: 125%;text-align: center;"><div class="aolmail_vcard"><div class="aolmail_adr"><div class="aolmail_street-address"></div></div></div></div></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" id="aolmail_utility" valign="middle"> </td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></center></div> </div> </div> <style type="text/css">#AOLMsgPart_2_29f1b92d-b119-4edc-915c-ccff80a9d0bb td{color: black;} @media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td{font-size:14px !important;} .aolReplacedBody table[id="canspamBar"] td a{display:block !important; margin-top:10px !important;} } </style>

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Re: [Oe List ...] Where did our on-line community go?
by Rod Rippel via OE 16 Sep '16

16 Sep '16

Greetings. Count me in. From: via OE Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2016 2:13 PM To: Oe(a)wedgeblade.net Subject: [Oe List ...] Where did our on-line community go? I miss our news and discussions. What happened? Election too depressing? We're too old? Sick? Where did everyone go? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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Re: [Oe List ...] Where did our on-line community go?
by Timothy Wegner via OE 16 Sep '16

16 Sep '16

Ellie Stock wrote: >> it seems to me the decline started after the change in email procedure, where, to "respond" no longer goes to the whole community but just to the person who has sent the email. >> The previous list behavior (reply goes to sender) is considered the best practice for mailing lists, but different strokes for different folks. So I have changed it back. Be aware that replies to earlier posts will still go to the sender, but replies to this or later messages should go to the lists. When I say "will go to ..." keep in mind you can always make your reply positively go the the list by just making sure the list address (found in the footer of every message) is in the address list. I made the same change to both lists. There is no magic to keeping the list lively, it just needs a few folks posting some interesting material from time to time. In the last few years the dialogue list had more heavy duty discussions, and some folks have told me they actually preferred this list because it was quieter. But I gave up trying to nudge the lists one way or another years ago. The recent news from our Adelaide colleagues concerning the completed life of Frank Bremner brought up many memories from almost 40 years ago. Susan and I were in Australia from 1974 to 1978 and knew Frank well. Our son Dietrich was born in Adelaide. Tim

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Where did our on-line community go?
by via OE 16 Sep '16

16 Sep '16

I miss our news and discussions. What happened? Election too depressing? We're too old? Sick? Where did everyone go?

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