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5/28/16, Spong: Charting a New Reformation, Part XIX - The 5th Thesis, Miracles (continued)
by Ellie Stock via OE 03 May '16

03 May '16

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Charting a New Reformation Part XIX - The 5th Thesis, Miracles (continued) “In a post-Newtonian world supernatural invasions of the natural order performed by either the eternal God or the “Incarnate Jesus” are simply not a viable explanation of what actually happened.” We have noted earlier that originally miracles did not appear to have been connected with the memory of Jesus. The first book to portray Jesus as a worker of miracles was the gospel of Mark, written in the early eighth decade or some forty-two years after the crucifixion. Matthew, the second gospel writer, who copied almost ninety percent of Mark into his ninth decade gospel, repeated every miracle that Mark had included, while adding only one other. Luke the third gospel writer heightens the note of the miraculous greatly in his late ninth to early tenth decade work. Luke’s story of the resurrection, for example, is far more supernatural than anything written prior to Luke. In Luke, the resurrected Jesus appears to be able to materialize into and to dematerialize out of thin air. In Luke, Jesus can also defy gravity and disappear into the sky as if propelled by an unseen rocket force. In the later development of these twelve theses, I will explore these heightened stories in regard to the resurrection and the ascension more fully. Suffice it now to limit myself to some general observations in regard to the presence of seemingly supernatural events. Once we recognize that miracle stories are a late-developing part of the Jesus tradition, we can look at them with greater objectivity. When we do, a number of things become obvious. First, we note that the miraculous elements in these stories grow as the stories are repeated in a later work. Second, we discover that frequently there are in the gospel miracle stories about Jesus, echoes of a narrative from the Hebrew Scriptures now being retold about Jesus. Third, each miracle story appears to have the interpretive purpose of relating Jesus to the expected messiah. These observations carry us deeper into the gospel texts and give us another way to view miracles other than to relate to them as the deeds being done by God in human disguise, which is the Christological lens through which so many traditional Christians view them today. The development of this kind of Christology, that is the study of the divine nature of Jesus, has grown rapidly over the centuries. In the Epistle to the Philippians, Paul spoke of God emptying the divine self into Jesus, but no one can seriously argue that Paul was talking about what later came to be called “incarnation.” Paul was not saying that the divine entered into and took over the human in the life of Jesus. This is made clear in other places in the Pauline corpus when Paul talks about God “designating” Jesus as “the Son of God by the action of the Holy Spirit” by raising Jesus from the dead (Romans 1:1-4). For Paul Jesus did not in and of himself “rise” from the dead. God raised him! If God can designate and “raise” Jesus, then clearly this is not a description of co-equality. Paul was too deeply Jewish to entertain Trinitarian thinking. Mark also appears not to be a Trinitarian. At the beginning of his gospel Mark describes Jesus as a fully human, adult male who comes to be baptized by John in the River Jordan. It is in that baptismal act, we are told, that God’s spirit infuses the human Jesus. Incarnational and Trinitarian thinking, this is not! In the later gospels of Matthew and Luke major steps are taken toward “incarnational and Trinitarian” thinking. Both added a virgin birth story to the memory of Jesus. God now enters Jesus at conception not at resurrection, as Paul had implied, or at his baptism, which Mark seemed to suggest. As the years go by the gospel miracles became less and less God acting through Jesus and more and more descriptive of Jesus acting on behalf of God. The creator of the world in human form could certainly make the winds and waves obey him. The divine Jesus could surely banish illness, which was thought of in the first century as God’s punishment of human beings for the sinfulness of their lives. The world in which this “divine Jesus” lived had not yet heard of germs, viruses, tumors, cholesterol, or of human cells expanding in a reckless and disorganized manner. Once those things were discovered, then prayers requesting the miracle of healing, or a sacrifice offered to appease the punishing deity, began to be seen as nonsensical. By the time the Fourth Gospel was written (95-100 CE), miracles had been transformed into “signs.” There is a difference. A miracle is defined as an objective event, which can be observed and documented. A sign is an event that points beyond itself to something that is mysterious and unseen, but not doubted. In the Fourth Gospel, John portrays Jesus as the author and originator of seven powerful signs, two of which are absolutely unique, having never been mentioned or even hinted at in the three earlier gospels. The first of these is the strange story of Jesus changing water into wine. The other is the dramatic story of Jesus calling forth from his burial place, the four-days-dead-and-buried Lazarus. This brief analysis drives us to ask: “Did any of these miraculous events really happen?” The answer to that question is, I now believe, a firm no. Does this mean that the gospel writers were telling us about things that never happened, or does it mean that we have literalized inappropriately the gospels for far too long? Earlier in this series, we traced the development of miracles in the entire Bible; they are not omnipresent. Biblical miracles only seem to occur in the cycles of stories that have gathered around the heroic figures in Jewish history. In particular, these figures focus on what might be called the “twin towers of Israel’s religious life,” the law and the prophets. Moses was the father of the law while Elijah was the father of the prophets. These are the major biblical figures around which miracle stories have gathered in Hebrew history. We also noted that these miracles occurred in the lives of Moses and Elijah’s immediate successors. It looks as if the miracles stories identified with Moses were then wrapped around Joshua, while the miracle stories originally identified with Elijah were then wrapped around Elisha. When we arrive at the Jesus story, we discover that Moses-Joshua stories have now been wrapped around Jesus. Like Moses, Jesus has power over nature. Moses could split the Red Sea, Jesus could calm the storm and walk on water. Moses could cause manna to fall in the wilderness to feed the hungry children of Israel, while Jesus, in another wilderness, could take a limited number of loaves and fishes and feed a multitude. Are not these gospel writers following an ancient Jewish story-telling tradition, to assert that the same God who was experienced as present in Moses was now clearly present in Jesus? Did these biblical authors ever consider the possibility that these miracle stories would ever be taken literally? Did they think for a moment that they were writing history? No, of course not! They were, in a typically Jewish manner, painting an interpretive portrait. Elijah and Elisha expanded the domain of the miraculous from the world of nature, as it was for Moses and Joshua, to the world of human experience. Both Elijah and Elisha were said, for example, to have been able to raise the dead. It was a widow’s only son, who was raised in the Elijah narrative. So are we surprised when Luke wraps that story around Jesus and it becomes Jesus raising the only son of a widow in the village of Nain? Elisha raises a child from the dead. That story is also wrapped around Jesus when Mark, Matthew and Luke all relate a story of Jesus raising a child from the dead. So both the nature miracles and the ability to raise the dead appear to be Jewish stories about past heroes now being retold about Jesus. That still leaves us, however, with two categories of miracle stories attributed to Jesus that do not fit into these Hebrew patterns. The first category includes most of the healing miracles, in which Jesus is reported to be able to give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, the ability to sing to the mute and the ability to walk to the lame. The second are the “signs” that occur in the Fourth Gospel. What is their source? From whence are they derived? Could these still be viewed as literal accounts of historical events? Time and space require that we separate the two categories, so I will deal with the healing miracles this week and the Johannine signs next week. If we were people familiar with the Jewish Scriptures, we would know that messianic thinking had long viewed the promised messiah as the one who would inaugurate the reign of the Kingdom of God in human history as spelled out by Isaiah in the 8th century BCE. When the Kingdom of God dawned, telling signs, Isaiah said, would make all people aware of it. Water, he said, would flow in the desert, allowing the crocuses to grow there. Then human wholeness would transform human brokenness. In the messianic age, Isaiah suggested, the blind would see, the deaf hear, the mute sing and the lame walk. If one believed Jesus was the messiah inaugurating the Kingdom of God, then the signs of that age must surely be attributed to him. This, I now believe, is the primary source of the New Testament healing miracles. This is also why miracles were so late in being attributed to Jesus. They had to wait until this understanding of Christology developed. The healing miracles in the gospels were not ever events that actually happened, they were rather signs of the presence of God bringing the messianic age into being. We have misread them as miracles. It is a new insight – the burden of the miracles is lifted off the memory of Jesus in our age when supernatural thinking does not fit well into our world. John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Raymond Rakower From Gex, France, writes: Question: It’s always a new pleasure and enrichment to read your weekly issues. If you’ll forgive my arrogance, I would like to make a suggestion, a tentative explanation of the unshakable conviction of so many people that there is an almighty theistic God outside our universe It might be the vague recollection, an echo of the last weeks or months of our fetus life when our universe was limited to our mother’s placenta but with an acoustic system already operational and connected to our primitive brain. We heard the voice of our father coming from outside of this universe and many a time with a deep caring male voice. This recollection would be later incorporated in the baby after a couple of years when its unconscious mind would develop. Hence so many people will never accept to abandon their belief. I got this idea whilst reading (and translating into French at my favorite publisher’s request) the book of Aletha J. Solter, PhD, The Attachment Play, based on the behavior theory. She demonstrates in this book the fact that after the birth, the baby remembers sometimes for clearly a couple of years what happened before and during its birth! She used this remarkable memory of the early childhood to heal some children’s behavior problems. My second point in this email concerns your Q&A, in your response to the question of Sue Stover. I recently read a book, which analyses many details that are quite familiar to you: The Yahweh vs. the Elohim traditions of the Old Testament. Its title is Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman. It may contain some interesting hypotheses about this topic. Answer: Dear Ray, Thank you for your letter with your provocative insights. My readers need to know that I have had the chance to know you and to talk with you about these and many other things in the years of our friendship. They also need to know that you were the first translator of my books into French. You have always been a resource to my life and both Christine and I look forward to our opportunity to see you in Basel, Switzerland next October. In regard to the comments and questions expressed in your letter, let me say that I am certain that there is something called “pre-birth memory.” Evidence for that seems well established. I am also convinced that there is something real about what Carl Jung called “the collective unconscious,” which looks at some other interconnections. I have not, however, read deeply enough on that subject to have formed sufficiently well-researched opinions that I would be comfortable sharing with others. In the field of theology we are oft times tempted to say more than we know and even to become dogmatic in the face of mystery. The Christian life, I remind myself daily, is a journey into a dimension of truth that no human mind can ever fully possess. So I have no great light that I want to flash before your fascinating suggestion that the idea of a theistic God is derived from the suggestion that an unborn child experiences his or her father first as a presence from a universe different from the one the fetus occupies. I find that suggestion intriguing, but not convincing. It seems to me that there are many sources of that idea, not just one. Above all I am convinced that every idea of God ultimately arises from a human experience, but that does not mean God is no more than a mythologized human experience. Over the years of human history every human definition of God has finally died, or been radically revised in the light of new knowledge and expanded human experience. So in my mind there is a reality to God that transcends every definition. God does not die when any human definition of God, like “theism” dies. I make a clear distinction between God and every human idea of God. So I will take your idea under advisement, just because it is your idea, and I will explore it further. Perhaps we can discuss it more in October. Until then we send you our best wishes. John Shelby Spong Announcements Bishop John Shelby Spong to speak at and receive the Religious Liberty Award at the American Humanist Society's 75th Anniversary Conference, May 26th - 29th in Chicago, IL.

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5/14/16, Spong: Charting A New Reformation, Part XVIII - The Fifth Thesis, Miracles (continued)
by Ellie Stock via OE 03 May '16

03 May '16

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Charting A New Reformation Part XVIII - The Fifth Thesis, Miracles (continued) Following the Exodus, Moses’ miraculous power was never again so powerfully displayed in the biblical story, but it did not disappear. In a battle against the Amalekites (Exod. 17:8-14) when Moses held his hands up, the Hebrew army won the day, but when fatigue forced him to lower his arms, his enemies prevailed. This problem was solved when Aaron and Hur stood by his side and held his arms up. God was still directing the affairs of human beings from above the sky and Moses was God’s vessel. Other nature miracles adorn the Moses story. When the Hebrew people had no food in the wilderness God, at Moses’ request, rained heavenly bread called manna, upon them. When there was a shortage of water, Moses struck a rock at a place called Meribah and water flowed forth in abundance (Exod. 17:1-7). This was, however, a strange miracle for although God appears to have ordered it, a Hebrew norm was violated. Moses demanded that God bring water out of this rock. It was not proper for a human being to give God orders. The norm was for God to command and for human beings to obey. Moses had, quite improperly, put “God to the test.” God was not pleased. The story said that God had clothed Moses with miraculous power, but because of this serious indiscretion, Moses was to be punished by being forever prohibited from entering the “Promised Land.” While miracles were clearly associated with the memory of Moses, it would not have occurred to anyone to speak of him as “the son of God.” He was simply a human channel through whom God’s power was allowed to work. There was no confusion of the medium with the message. Miraculous power belonged to God; it was not thought of as Moses’ possession. When Moses died (Deut. 34), he was succeeded by Joshua, who had been his military captain. There is always great anxiety in a nation when it loses its leader, especially a long time and successful leader like Moses. One of the ways in the story-telling tradition of the Jews that anxiety was dissipated was to wrap stories about the deceased leader around his successor. The ancients did not see this as dishonest. What this practice was designed to do was to convey the message that the God of Moses was still with them, but now as the God of Joshua. So Joshua’s life was said to be marked with the same power that had once marked the life of Moses. The power to manipulate the forces of nature had been a sign of God’s presence with Moses. Moses had been portrayed as able to command the forces of nature. Joshua would now exhibit a similar power. He would command the sun to stand still in the sky on its journey around the earth (Joshua 10). This would enable Joshua’s army more daylight in which his soldiers were able to kill more retreating Amorites before they found safety under the cover of darkness. It was a power similar to that of Moses. The second example was an even more obvious Moses story. Moses had split the waters of the Red Sea to allow the children of Israel to escape death at the hands of the Egyptians and to walk through that sea into the safety of the wilderness. Joshua confronted another body of water that impeded the Israelites’ progress. This time it was the Jordan River. Those who have seen the Jordan River are not impressed with either its size or its difficulty to navigate. In some seasons of the year, one can literally step across the tiny stream in the midst of the river basin. So the author of the book of Joshua had to heighten the size and degree of difficulty. He states that this miracle occurred when the river was in flood season and was a massive body of rushing water. In Moses-like fashion, Joshua stepped into this flooded river and the waters parted so that Joshua and his army could invade the territory populated by the Canaanites by walking on dry land. In these narratives, Joshua, like Moses, was seen as possessing supernatural power, but he too, was simply a vehicle, a channel, through which the miraculous power of God could be made available in human history. Thus, miracles in the Bible were originally not a sign of the human becoming divine, but rather the sign that God could work through a human life to establish God’s power over nature. It would be about four hundred years before miracles would make a second appearance in the biblical story. Once again miracles were associated with the lives of Jewish heroes. These heroes were also a connected pair of figures, who were at the heart of Israel’s national life. While Moses would become known as the father of the law, this man, Elijah, would become known as the father of Israel’s prophetic movement. He would be linked with his successor, Elisha, to form the second tandem to which miracles would be attached. What constituted a miracle, however, began to be greatly expanded. First, there was in the lives of these two figures a repetition of the nature miracles that marked the previous heroes, Moses and Joshua. For example, Elijah and Elisha had the power to expand the food supply, a cruse of oil and a supply of grain were not diminished with use. Perhaps the most obvious sign of the continuity of the Moses-Joshua tradition was seen in that both Elijah and Elisha, when impeded from their goals by the Jordan River, responded by sweeping a mantle over the water of that river and standing back to watch the waters part, which enabled them to overcome this watery barrier and to walk across the river bed on dry land. This Moses story, wrapped originally around Israel’s founding hero at the Red Sea, was later wrapped around Joshua, then wrapped around Elijah and finally wrapped around Elisha. There are thus four-splitting-of-the-waters stories in the Hebrew Scriptures. Other miraculous acts were attributed to this 8th century BCE duo of Jewish heroes. Elijah and Elisha could both perform supernatural acts of healing that were seen as miracles. Both were also said to be able to raise the dead. Elijah raised the only son of a widow from the dead. Elisha raised a child from the dead. So by the eighth century, before the Common Era, the Hebrew Scriptures spoke of the miraculous power being within the capability of the lives of the foremost heroes of Israel. Once again, it was God’s power acting through God’s servants in the Hebrew Scriptures, although increasingly as the stories were told, that power was more and more attributed to the people themselves. After Elijah and Elisha, we note that miracles largely disappeared from the biblical story until the first century when they were told again, first about Jesus of Nazareth in the gospel tradition and then about his immediate successors, the apostles, in the book of Acts. The patterns were quite similar. The supernatural acts fell into three categories. First, there were nature miracles: the stilling of the storm and the ability to walk on water. There were also narratives about the ability to expand the food supply. Six times in the gospels an account was given of Jesus feeding an almost unlimited multitude — 5000 on four occasions, 4000 on two occasions — with a limited number of loaves and fishes. Next in the Jesus narrative were the raising of the dead stories, five to be specific are related in the four gospels, but only three people were said to have been raised from the dead. That was because the narrative of Jesus raising a child, the daughter of Jairus, from the dead, was told three times, once in Mark, once in Matthew and once in Luke. The details vary, but only slightly. The main story line is, however, almost identical with the account of Elisha raising a child from the dead. The second raising of the dead story is told only by Luke and involved Jesus raising from the dead the only son of a widow, which supposedly took place in the village of Nain. This narrative, upon a closer examination, appears to be based on the story of Elijah raising from the dead the only son of a widow. The third raising of the dead story is only told by John and is the familiar account of the raising the four-days-dead Lazarus, who was said to have literally walked out of his tomb. This story appears to have had no antecedent in the Hebrew Scriptures whatsoever, but perhaps it was based on Luke’s parable of Lazarus and the rich man. Finally there is a series of miracle stories associated with Jesus that are the most familiar of the miracle stories in the Bible. I refer to those narratives in which the blind are enabled to see, the deaf to hear, the mute to sing and the crippled or lame to leap. Many of these healing miracles are later attributed to the disciples in the book of Acts, which serve to give us the third pairing of miracles stories to keep the pattern intact. Clearly the same power, observed in Jesus, was said to have been present in the leaders of the early Christian Church. Is there a source in the Hebrew Scriptures that might give meaning to this final type of healing miracles attributed to Jesus? I think there is. In the 35th chapter of Isaiah, the prophet is addressing the subject of the signs that will mark the emergence of the Kingdom of God on earth. This was, in apocalyptic Jewish thought, nothing less than the birth of the messianic age. Isaiah responded that the world would recognize the in-breaking of the Kingdom in these ways: water would flow in the desert, the crocuses would bloom in places where they had never bloomed before and human wholeness would appear in places that had been marked with human brokenness. That is “the blind would see, the deaf would hear, the mute would shout and the lame would leap.” For Isaiah these would be the signs that would signal the messiah’s arrival on earth to inaugurate the “Kingdom of God.” Are these miracle stories then interpretive signs rather than literal events? I think they are. We will pursue this conversation further next week, when we discover that Jesus himself is said to have made this identification. When one really reads the text of the gospels, much of the miraculous framework that we have traditionally placed on the Bible gives way to a very different understanding. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Albert Ringewald of Cocoa Beach, Florida writes: Question: I would appreciate it if you could provide me with your views on Christian forgiveness. It seems to me on this issue that Christians are all over the map. Some are quick to offer forgiveness as shown to us recently over closed circuit TV by the relatives of the nine victims of Charleston’s Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church to the shooter, who specifically expressed no remorse during his court hearing; to the author, Roxanne Gay, who wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed (June 23, 2015) that her Catholic upbringing had taught her that “forgiveness requires reconciliation by way of confession and penance.” I think the almost instantaneous expression of forgiveness by the relatives of the church shooter’s victims perplexed many of us as sincere, yet somehow contrived because of its suddenness.” Complicating matters further, Kristin Neff, out of the University of Texas, has written extensively about self-compassion and to forgive is to lay down the burden of anger toward the offender and thereby changing your role as “victim” to finding compassion for yourself and possibly even for the offender. Finally, we seem to be taught the essentials of forgiveness through the parable of “The Prodigal Son” contained in the gospel of Luke, in which the father forgives the wayward son only after the son acknowledges his wrongdoings and begs for forgiveness. Would forgiveness have been proffered by the father without contrition on the part of the son? Does forgiveness require acknowledgement of the wrong doing by the offender? Does forgiveness require the offender to ask for it in order that it be effective? Psychologists are quick to describe the benefits of forgiveness, but they fail to describe the requirements, if any. Answer: Dear Albert, Thank you for your questions and for posing the issue so powerfully with your very contemporary examples. Let me try to separate the wheat from the chaff. First forgiveness is in my opinion, ultimately a godlike response. As such it is freely given, always available and requires nothing. Our ability to receive or to access this ever-present forgiveness may require repentance and an attempt at restitution, but that is a requirement of our receptiveness, it is not a requirement located in forgiveness itself. So it seems to me that the families of the victims of the shooting in the Charleston, S.C. African Methodist Episcopal Church acted out of a profound understanding of what the forgiveness of God is like. It was that very powerful witness to this ultimate meaning of forgiveness that moved the people of South Carolina to look at their own behavior vis-à-vis people of African descent and to bring to the ground the long-flying flags of the Confederacy. The forgiveness of God, which they articulated, does not require confession from the guilty one in order for it to be given; but it may require confession in order for that forgiveness to be received by the guilty one to whom it was so freely offered. That is the picture of forgiveness I find in the New Testament. In the episode of the woman taken in the act of adultery, forgiveness is offered long before she was told, “go and sin no more.” Jesus is portrayed in Luke as offering forgiveness to the soldiers who crucified him. There is no indication that he required them to repent first. Forgiveness is a gift of God. It is grace; no prerequisites are required. The life of Jesus reveals this to me quite powerfully. He was betrayed and he loved his betrayer. He was denied and he loved his denier. He was forsaken and he loved those who forsook him. He was tortured and he loved his torturers. He was murdered and he loved his murderers. That is a portrait of the forgiveness of God being lived out in a human life. What the God presence in Jesus says to each of us is this: “There is nothing you can do and nothing you can be that will place you outside the boundaries of God’s love.” We are loved as the hymn says: “Just as I am without one plea.” It is not your business or mine to judge whether forgiveness is deserved. It is not your business or mine to determine whether repentance is adequate. Those are the results of the rules of religion that often appear to have been elevated to a status they have never merited. Even in the parable of the Prodigal Son, which you cite, the wayward son “comes to himself,” that is, he turns toward the forgiveness that was always there even when he could not see it. It is human to judge, but judging is finally an act of idolatry. It assumes that you have the right to judge. It assumes that you can place limits on the forgiveness of God. It assumes that your righteousness is greater than God’s righteousness. The response of religion is never to be identified with the response of God. Religion gave us anti-Semitism, the Muslim-hating Crusades, the moralistic Puritans, the justification of slavery, segregation and Apartheid, the diminution of women and the repression of homosexual persons. Judgment arises out of the human tendency to place onto God the limits that you yourself cannot transcend. “How often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?” asked the disciples. Then trying to answer their own question, they said, “until seven times?” Jesus’ response was “Until seventy times seven.” Did he mean that we must forgive 490 times, but not 491? No, he was calling his disciples beyond any limits because forgiveness with limits is never forgiveness. There are no requirements in the forgiveness of God. That is the truth that calls you and me beyond our own limits and beyond the perilous suggestion that you or I have the right to judge anyone. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements Meet Bishop Spong at a private VIP reception Bishop Spong will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming Death and Afterlife Awareness Conference in St. Louis, May 12-15, 2016. He will also be the guest of honor at an intimate VIP reception limited to only 30 guests. This is a rare opportunity to meet at chat with him, so reserve your tickets early! Click here for details!

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Fwd: Terrible Situation
by George Holcombe via OE 02 May '16

02 May '16

Someone is using Ellie’s name with one of those distress calls to get money. George Holcombe 14900 Yellowleaf Tr. Austin, TX 78728 Mobile 512/252-2756 geowanda1(a)me.com "Whatever the problem, community is the answer. There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about." Margaret Wheatley > Begin forwarded message: > > From: Ellie Stock <memaltman(a)aol.com> > Subject: Terrible Situation > Date: May 2, 2016 at 1:09:43 AM CDT > To: geowanda1(a)me.com > Reply-To: elliestock1(a)outlook.com > > I really hope you get this fast as i could not inform everyone about my trip. This message is coming to you with great depression due to the state of my discomfort. I'm presently in Philippines, I came here for a conference and I just had my bags stolen from me and personal belongings. I have been trying to sort things out with the necessary authorities, the bad news is my flight will be leaving very soon. I need some assistance from you. > > Let me know if you can be of any help > > Thanks. > > Ellie

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"Journey Reflection" March Blog Posts
by John C via OE 30 Apr '16

30 Apr '16

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(no subject)
by ICA International via OE 27 Apr '16

27 Apr '16

Reminder for entries This reminder is for the Global Buzz that will be published May 5th. 2016 (Please send your entries at least a day ahead) Please send all your entries by regular e-mail to: inform(a)ica-international.org with your entry as an attatchment. Send details of news items, training programmes, your peer to peer connections with other ICAs, any concerns you may have and of any events that are coming up at your location. Your report can be long or short, but remember that all other ICAs would really like to know about the things that matter where you are, and what you are doing as an ICA. Peter, for ICAI Communications Pour les entrées de rappel Ce rappel est à la Global Buzz qui sera publié le 5 Mai 2016 (Veuillez envoyer vos entrées au moins une journée à l'avance) Veuillez envoyer toutes vos entrées maintenant par courriel ordinaire à : inform(a)ica-international.org avec votre entrée comme un attatchment. Envoyer les détails des articles de nouvelles, des programmes de formation, vos connexions peer to peer avec d'autres CIAS, de toute préoccupation que vous pourriez avoir et de tous les événements qui sont à venir à votre emplacement. Votre rapport peut être longue ou courte, mais rappelez-vous que toutes les autres CIAS aimerait vraiment savoir à propos de choses qui importe où vous êtes et ce que vous faites comme une ICA. Recordatorio de las entradas Este aviso es para el Global Buzz que se publicarán 5 Mayo 2016 (Favor de enviar sus entradas al menos con un día de antelación) Por favor envíe todos sus entradas ahora por correo electrónico a: inform(a)ica-international.org con su entrada como un archivo adjunto. Enviar detalles de noticias, programas de capacitación, el peer to peer las conexiones con otros convenios o acuerdos internacionales, las preocupaciones que usted pueda tener y de los eventos que se aproximan en su ubicación. El informe puede ser a corto o largo, pero hay que recordar que todos los demás convenios quisiera saber realmente sobre lo que realmente importa, y lo que están haciendo una ICA.

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JV's class photo 2
by Jaime R Vergara via OE 24 Apr '16

24 Apr '16

wangzhimu2031 earthrise consciousness, a gift; earthbound commitment, my choice yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate! in all, celebrate!

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Friday and Monday on ST
by Jaime R Vergara via OE 24 Apr '16

24 Apr '16

The Earth In aburst of heavenly awe, Astronaut Edgar Mitchell exuded in lunarscape: "Suddenly, from behind the rim of themoon, in long slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparklingblue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky blue sphere laced with slowlyswirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea ofblack mystery. It takes more than amoment to fully realize this is Earth ... home." TheEarth is this season's center of attention, though not as viewed from itssplendor at the surface of the moon as it is with what we do in heating up itstemperature and the consequent drastic climate warming in its biosphere. Theclimate took center stage in the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conferencefor almost two weeks ending December 12. One hundred ninety-six nations were in attendance. They adopted an Agreement that is onlylegally binding if a number of nations producing a percentage of globalgreenhouse emission actually do something through their legal systems, which isto say, a lot of barks without much bite. TheUnited States through its executive office is often a leading party to aninternational agreement only to be denied muscle by the US Congress, e.g., itrefused to ratify a treaty on biodiversity. The numbers in international Agreements guidenational targets adhered to by nations that are already poor because of theircompliance but ignored by the big guys that emits them. A good example is COPS 21 (on biodiversity). Mei mei is a cute little girl's nicknameused in China. Mei is also the black mineral that is dug in Dong Bei, and the coalin Shanxi west of Beijing where 90 percent of the land allegedly is black gold. The increase on investment in China onmanufacturing was due to the low cost of coal energy that devastated China'scountryside and biosphere. Attemptsto stifle the economic progress of China focused on its use of coal as itsenergy source. China does not haveextensive fossil fuel source to rely on though its assertive occupation of theSpratly moves in that direction and is severely criticized by the US and itsbusiness interests in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan. The United States can fly all kinds of B-52over island structures that China built but the new economic superpower is notgoing to budge, as the immediate issue of South China Sea is energy sourcerather than sovereignty, which China considers historically to be a closedissue. Besides, the place is not calledChina Sea for nothing! The United States'current use of coal at its most efficient level emits carbon 130 times what theParis Conference aims for it to do if the nations across the planet attainseconomic parity to the US in a hundred years. This is illusion of the worst kind. The Summit's intentions were worst than a mirage in the desert. It lacks operational basis. Meanwhile, theplanet reels as water from melting ice in the Arctic and Antarctic regionscontinue to add more fluid into the ocean, making it heavier to effect thetremors that dislodges plates, which then causes half of the land areas of thePacific islands disappear at the same time it induces stronger quakes and achange in weather patterns in many parts of the globe. Not a lively prospect especially since we donot operate as a globe yet but do so as the archaic leftover nation-states fromthe divisions imposed by colonizing powers of the previous century. Mitchellwas perhaps prescient in his pronouncement. A less polite quote: "Fromout there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruffof the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look atthat, you sonnavabitch.'" Apologies to the sons amongst us who heardtheir teacher do math and said: "2 plus 2, the sum of which is 4." As my Sino tindera would say, the sum of which and sonnavabitch, same same. If ourApollo 14 astronaut is distraught over our treatment of the planet, his use ofthe SOB word is on the charitable side. TheObama administration refuses to extract coal on Federal land and met opposition. The corporate sector is aghast at this executiveact. The Supreme Court intervened ontheir behalf. I madea supplementary workbook for my class using the Mitchell picture on thecover. Students just added the word"earthrise" into their vocabulary. A paradigm shift is corroding the defining fealty once held on politicalstructures the Europeans named, like Spain on Señor Felipe's behalf (thus, the Philippines) during the medievaland colonial eras, and unwittingly inherited by the US military in itspost-WWII presence in the rest of the world, but now simply a fragile blue orbin the sky. "Welive in the Universe. On the PlanetEarth", they sing. "We lookfor life in the sky so blue, down on Marianas for something new, we look at theworld we have on our hands. Oh, whatshall we do?" Then they whisper to each other at the end:"We're gonna build it." Monastic Forfourteen years, I was a member of a family Religious Order that collaboratedwith Jews and Moslems, seculars and non-theists, truly ecumenical beyondecclesiastical structures. Arising from Christendom that fevered like a pentecostalcongregation (our Dean was previously an Ohio revival preacher whose diction isnot foreign at Victory Chapel in Saipan) on one end, and a socially-brandedliberal unitarian (we lived in the communities we served) on the other,and comprehensive diversity in between. Thebody's work was communal and cooperative, a global network of 2500 folks (maso menos), organized as determined service centers termed"centrum" and "nexus", with metro, regional, and areacorporate abodes called Religious Houses. Were one to compare it toanother body, one would be at a loss to find one. It was a uniqueexperiment, unrepeatable; there has never been one like it before, and therewill never be another one like it ever again. Wehad one task: to create a broad-based human (planetary and global) communitywherever we were located, symbolically in every time zone across theglobe. Process and procedure followed were highly participatory. Weenabled the local house and the community we served to missionalize vision;communal resource was utilitarian rather than privately owned (personalproperty in two suitcases), decision-making practiced broadly until a consensuswas pronounced, and self-hood was absolutely self-sustained, self-reliant, andself-confident. Mycharacterization of the body is somewhat like what my class hears and repeatsmid-course of daily class session: "I am one, unique, unrepeatable gift oflife into human history; there has never been one like me before and there willnever be another one like me ever again. I live my life." Theydecide. They choose. Thisis no rah-rah slogan so individuals can believe in an idealized self. Itis a statement of fact, the uniqueness and unrepeatability resulting from theunion of one sperm (out of a minimum of 200 million) with an egg that thenjourneys into finitude uniquely on its own until its completion. Myreckoning on my journey's length, given what I know of my genetics andstatistical probability, is 86 years! I invite my first graders to thinkof their education and life as a journey! Beinga monastic is, thereby, a given reality before it is a choice. One isuniquely on an unrepeatable journey from start to completion. It is notthat we choose, in the first instance, to be solitaries. We are born thatway. It echoes Akon and Joan Armatrading's song of "I, me andmyself". Our choice is to declare "what is", rather thanran away from it, to yen for and achieve an imagined objective or goal. As ateacher in a classroom, I have a board with the four core curriculum titleswhere we post our objective. (I personally go by what students willretain in their minds, and what they will experience in the process). Thefour components of the Core curriculum has underneath Language Arts, the word"words", for Math, "numbers", for Science, "How",and for Social Studies, the "5Ws". "Words"are nouns defined by adjectives and verbs with adverbs; "Numbers" aresigns (equals =, plus +, minus -, multiply x and divide ÷), "How" isprocess standardized, and the 5Ws are "what, when, where, who, andwhy". Acrossthe room, I posted a picture of the brain of a child that has three parts: the medullaoblongata, the cerebellum, and the cerebrum; the first, processessensual experiences of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, the second, findsthe balance on feelings, and the third, a sophisticated management of words andnumbers formally taught in academe, all three becoming the basis for the wholebody to respond in deeds. Whilethe eight (5 senses, feelings, thoughts, and deed) seem a lot especially sincethe students are just beginning the first year of a 16-year learning journey, Iteach them to "play attention" so learning shan't deteriorate intothe memory work of formulas and forms but of challenging usage. TheMonastic understanding clothed on the three classical vows, is that of the vowof poverty as detachment from matters unessential, the vow of chastity as beingabout one thing, and the vow of obedience as willing the Way Life Is (YHWH inJewish terms sans Zeus of Olympus) abides. So,what do I teach? There are only eight items, two less than the decimalsystem. Being about one thing is taking the laser beam of the times(symbolized by the smartphone that is now in the hands of more 90 percent ofthe population) to have input equals output. Then I transform mylifestyle so the time is managed, space is organized, roles are defined, and astory is told. I amnot about the pedagogy of content; I am a monastic who demonstrate methods,secularly and scientifically. I aim for a first grader the habit ofnursing their own brain to intentionally guide their own learning. Monastic, I am. Functional monastics, my students will be! wangzhimu2031 earthrise consciousness, a gift; earthbound commitment, my choice yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate! in all, celebrate!

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Jaime's Grade One class
by Jaime R Vergara via OE 16 Apr '16

16 Apr '16

My first week. Went down Costco for the white tables. (Definitely still with the Order. And that's even before I saw the $441 weekly check!) Now have 12 of them. Total students is 23; age ranging from 6-8. Of course, we start and end the day with "This is the day we have ..." 16 year journey to College. I intend to have the kids awake and equipped. (Folder on desk is their workbook I created.) Oh, room decor is fast getting filled with maps. I can use "Earth" posters, folks! And US/World/Oceana maps. We are a Third World country with not much public education funds. But we will make do! Jaime Vergara PO Box 503717 Saipan 96950 USA wangzhimu2031 earthrise consciousness, a gift; earthbound commitment, my choice yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate! in all, celebrate!

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4/14/16, Spong: Charting A New Reformation, Part XVII – The Fifth Thesis
by Ellie Stock via OE 14 Apr '16

14 Apr '16

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Charting A New Reformation Part XVII – The Fifth Thesis “The Miracles Stories of the Old Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Darwinian world as supernatural events performed by an Incarnate Deity.” I wonder how many of my readers are aware of the fact that miracles do not enter the Jesus tradition until the 8th decade. Paul, who wrote between the years 51 and 64, never once suggests that miracles were associated with the memory of the Jesus of history. There are some scholars who postulate what they believe is a lost document called Q. According to this point of view, this document would have to be earlier than Matthew and Luke, since both of them are said to be dependent on Q. Some like Dr. Robert Funk, who founded the Jesus Seminar, have suggested that Q might be as early as the fifties and, therefore, would pre-date Mark. I disagree with all of these Q theories since I am convinced that Q is nothing more than Matthew’s redactions on Mark and that Luke had both Mark and Matthew before him when he wrote. That, however, is not an argument into which I have any desire to enter in this series. I simply want to note that even if Q does turn out to be real, rather than a fantasy source, all agree that it is only a book of the sayings of Jesus. It does not recount any miraculous occurrences. So the Q hypothesis, whether true or not, still affirms my suggestion that miracles are not part of the primitive memory of Jesus. There are also some scholars, and once again I am not one of them, who assert a date even earlier than Mark for the gospel of Thomas, discovered in the 1940s among some ancient manuscripts at a place called Nag Hammadi. I see Thomas, along with the rest of the documents found in that same discovery, indeed in the same container, as gnostic documents that can be dated no earlier than the first quarter of the second century. Even if I am wrong, however, and Thomas is someday demonstrated to be our earliest gospel, I find it of interest that it attributes no supernatural acts to the memory of Jesus of Nazareth. So I feel safe in asserting that, contrary to what most people think, miracles were not connected with the memory of Jesus for at least two generations following the crucifixion. Hence the divine nature of Jesus in primitive Christianity never rested on the claim that he performed supernatural or miraculous acts. What then, we need to ask, is the meaning of such narratives as Jesus feeding a multitude with a limited number of loaves and fish? These feeding stories occur in no less than six versions in the four gospels. What are we to make of stories, told only in the Fourth Gospel, of Jesus changing water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee or of Jesus raising from the dead a four-days-dead and buried Lazarus? What are we to make of the other two stories found in the synoptic tradition of Jesus raising the dead; one the daughter of Jairus found in Mark, Matthew and Luke, and the other the only son of a widow in the village of Nain, which is only told by Luke? What do we do with the gospel stories depicting Jesus as being able to manipulate nature in supernatural ways? Did Jesus really still the storm or walk on water? How are we to understand the healing stories in the gospels, which assert that Jesus had the ability to give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, the ability to speak to the mute and the ability to walk to the crippled and paralyzed? In most of my years in the church, I assumed that these clearly supernatural acts were literally true because Jesus possessed supernatural power. Most people either still think this way and call it “faith,” or they reject biblical supernaturalism as a vestige of a believing age before people learned about how the world operates, a position that leads many to a dismissal of the entire Jesus tradition. In this series I search for a third perspective. First, let me say I am not interested in a world in which miracles can or do occur. That would mean that the world is in the hands of a capricious deity and that the task of religion is to manipulate this God so as to gain favorable treatment for ourselves. That is little more than the remains of a superstitious understanding of life, which was widely believed before the insights of Isaac Newton led us away from miracles and magic. I want to live in an ordered universe in which divine power is not at the ready to rescue us from the exigencies of human nature. Miracles, however, have always been part of our faith story. Can Christianity survive if miracles, understood as supernatural acts, are removed or if they cease to be believed in a literal way? That is now a question that modern Christians must address. So in our hope to create a New Reformation, we turn to the question of what do we do with the whole concept of miracles. I start this quest by pressing the issue raised in the opening paragraph as to just how original the miracle stories are to the memory of Jesus. Perhaps an even earlier question would be when did miracles become part of the whole biblical tradition? First let me identify the place of miracles in that story. Most people think that some miraculous event must be on every page of the Bible. That is their impression, but that is simply not so. Miraculous tales occur only in certain cycles of the Bible’s stories involving Jewish heroes. The prophets never talk about miracles. Isaiah might record some supernatural signs that accompanied his call to be a prophet, but dramatic stories of vocational calls are accepted and generally understood as subjective experiences. No one seem to want to objectify his or her call. The Wisdom literature in the Bible, including Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, the Psalter and the Song of Songs, is devoid of miraculous stories. Most of the Torah, once we get past the supernatural signs that accompanied both the Exodus and the delivery of the Torah to Moses by God on Mt. Sinai is free of any miraculous content. So the idea that the Bible is filled with miraculous occurrences is simply not so. Indeed a careful study of the Hebrew Scriptures will reveal that in these sacred pages miraculous power is attributed rarely and always to special heroic figures. The people to whom these miracles are attributed also seem to come in pairs, the hero and his immediate successor. The Bible contains only three of these pairs. The first one of these heroes is Moses. Miraculous signs are present in his life. In the desert God calls him from a miraculous bush, which is filled with flames, but which is never consumed. Then Moses is equipped, the narrative says, with a series of supernatural acts, designed to convince his enemies that he speaks with the voice of God. Some of these stories are absolutely bizarre! In negotiations with the Pharaoh and his advisors, Moses is able to cast his staff to the ground and watch it turn into a snake! That is a pretty good trick. We are told, however, that the Pharaoh’s magicians could duplicate this trick so suddenly there were snakes slithering all over the floor. The superiority of Moses’ power was then demonstrated by the fact that his snake could and did swallow up all of the snakes of the Pharaoh’s magicians. This narrative was used to prove that God’s power in Moses was greater than the magic of the magicians. Moses could also stick his hand into his tunic and then pull it out revealing it to be leprous. Then he placed it back into his tunic a second time and on this occasion pulled it out clean. It was a second negotiating trick in which Moses was able to demonstrate that he had God on his side. This is the place in the Bible where miracles are first introduced into the sacred text unless one treats the pregnancy of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, at age 90 as a miracle. It looks rather like a tale being told to show that God was involved in keeping the divine promise to make of Abraham a great nation. Once miracles are introduced into the Moses story, they are developed as a major part of that cycle, but we must remember that all of the Moses stories in the Bible were written some 300 years after his death. Moses was empowered regularly to initiate plagues to force the hated Egyptians to free the Hebrew slave people from bondage. The Nile River was turned into blood and the fish in the Nile died. Subsequently, all the water supplies in Egypt — creeks, ponds and pools — became blood. This too, however, turned out to be an act that Pharaoh’s magicians could do, so Pharaoh remained unimpressed. This narrative was clearly a tribal folk story. Then came the plague of frogs covering the land of Egypt. Pharaoh’s magicians once again replicated that power. When these first plagues did not work to free the people of Israel, Moses and Aaron brought on a plague of gnats. Finally, the magicians failed to match Moses’ power. When Pharaoh still did not relent, the plague of flies came. Then all of the Egyptian cattle became sick and died. (The first instance of Mad Cow Disease?). This was followed by plagues of boils, hail, locusts and darkness. Finally there came the most terrifying plague of all; it was still a supernatural act. God would in this plague send the angel of death throughout the land to slay, shall we say to murder, the first-born son in every Egyptian household. Hebrew homes, we recall from this story, were protected by the blood of the “Paschal Lamb” on their doorposts. This was the plague, the Bible asserts, that finally won the release of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. Supernatural acts thus make their appearance in the Bible in the story of Moses and the Exodus. God was portrayed as working through Moses. Having been introduced to biblical miracles, we will now trace the rise and the limits of supernatural, miraculous power in the Bible. At the beginning, as was the case with Moses, we note the fact that miracles had to do with affecting nature; but that limit was destined not to hold. So stay tuned. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Christer Hugo from Stockholm, Sweden, writes: Question: I am a Lutheran pastor in the Church of Sweden, Diocese of Stockholm. I first started to read your work around the turn of the century. I was first very encouraged by the postings entitled “The Bishop’s Voice.” Next I received and read your exciting autobiography, Here I Stand: My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love and Equality and reviewed it for a church periodical. When you first visited Stockholm, I listened to your extraordinary presentation at Sofia Church. Since then many things have happened in my life. At various points, I have thought I would have to leave the ministry and the church in order to be intellectually honest. I couldn’t stand or handle the claims of theism anymore — I was fed up with religion, to put it bluntly. Rediscovering your work and reading Why Christianity Must Change or Die and A New Christianity for a New World meant that a road was opened to me, which made it possible to continue my ministry and stay in the church. I’m not sure what label to put on myself right now; definitely non-theist, perhaps atheist, perhaps natural pantheist, but certainly I still struggle on almost a daily basis with the religious language of my tradition. Even in a liberal church like the Church of Sweden, theistic language and presuppositions are all but omnipresent. I just want to say a warm and heartfelt THANK YOU for your untiring work! Just recently I read your letter to the moderator of the United Church of Canada in defense of Gretta Vosper – and I was once again encouraged and felt hope for the church. I wish you joy and continued strength in days to come. Answer: Dear Christer, Thanks so much for your letter. It is pastors like you and Gretta Vosper in Canada, to whom you refer, that keep the church alive and struggling to walk forward. It is also pastors like you who are constantly marginalized by institutional Christians. You should not be alone in Sweden. You had great predecessors in such people as the Rev. Marianne Blom, who pioneered progressive thinking in Sweden prior to her death; Krister Stendahl, who taught at Harvard for most of his career, but who also served as the Bishop of Stockholm near the end of his life; K. G. Hammar, who was the primate of your church, when he and I did a dialogue in the Uppsala University auditorium before a capacity audience, and Hans Ulfvebrand, who was the pastor of the Sofia Church when I gave lectures there, just to mention a few. All of these people were great, open, progressive leaders. You walk in a noble tradition. You also speak for numbers of Swedish Lutherans, who no longer attend church. They need to hear that what they experience in church is in so many instances not what Christianity is. So I hope you recognize that your life, your role in the Lutheran Church and your ministry are of the utmost importance. Leaders like you must be public and visible. I know that is not an easy role to play for when you disturb the security systems of the majority of religious people, their anger can be overwhelming. I have received sixteen death threats in my life. None came from an atheist or a Buddhist; they all came from “Bible-quoting, true-believing Christians.” Perhaps they never read the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Your public voice will give confidence to the voices of those who find no meaning in the words the Christian Church continues to use. God is so much greater than our human perception of God. Stay in touch with me. You are not alone. John Shelby Spong Announcements

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Thanks
by Doris Hahn via OE 10 Apr '16

10 Apr '16

Thanks to all of you who sent photos of JWM et al -- fun for all of us!. If there are others, send them along--I don't intend to stop a good thing, but am really appreciative of what has been posted. Peace, Doris Hahn

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