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May 2014 "Journey Reflection" Blog Review
by Lynda Cock via OE 03 Jun '14

03 Jun '14

Colleagues, friends, and relatives, Check out the most viewed blog posts of the month by clicking <http://rejourney.blogspot.com/2014/05/journey-reflection-blog-review-may-20 14.html> "Journey Reflection" Blog Review (May 2014). There has been a strong response to our new daily blog post e-mail via ChimpMail. Let us know if you would like to be added. Journey on, Lynda and John ____________ >Daily Blog: "Journey Reflection" at this link: www.reJourney.blogspot.com <http://www.rejourney.blogspot.com/> >Web Page: <http://www.transcribebooks.com/> www.transcribebooks.com >Books: http://www.amazon.com/John-P.-Cock/e/B001K8Y5KW

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Fwd: GMCA May 25th
by David Zahrt via OE 02 Jun '14

02 Jun '14

Great March for Climate Action: In New Mexico *May 25, Sunday, * On Sunday, May 25, Bob and I had breakfast at the B&B. There were 10 around the table. We chose the Hot Oats Brule for the 1st course, and the Frittata for the 2nd. Bob, a retired Presbyterian minister, went to the local Presbyterian Church. He indicated that he would make a little presentation there about the March. Sarah took me to the repair shop and I brought the Geartruck back to the campsite. The spark plugs were replaced. We’re going to wait ‘til Colorado Springs to get the carburetor replaced. In the afternoon I went to the Temple for lunch. There was an announcement indicating we were scheduled for a Garden Work at 2pm. At 1:45 it began to rain so it was canceled. Later on I went to a Coffee Shop that was sponsoring a Meet-and-Greet event. I met Morgan and as we exchanged our personal background information, we discovered we had a good deal in common—using managed grazing; protecting and recovering the prairie; singing. I suggested that he would find the March interesting and should join us. He went and got his wife to join us. He suggested to her that he go on the March and asked if she would be able to mind his business responsibilities. She said “Yes.” He asked about my age. I told him that I was the oldest Marcher and was only 76. He indicated that he was aging and showed me the gray hair on his chest. I immediately sang *Yesterday*! They were both amused. Morgan asked what I found most difficult about the March. I had an answer for him. 1) I am one of 2 among the 35 (+or-) Marchers that is married. The youngest group is 18-25. It seems that the rest are a group that have found difficulty establishing a lasting relationship with a partner. That sets me apart. 2) Everyone has a cell phone. So people are multi-tasking all the time. It’s difficult to focus attention on one issue. Morgan has done some graduate work in psychology and commented that multi-tasking is negative behavior. Text messages are sent to inform us about the daily Route. I can’t receive Text messages, and I turn my cell phone off during the day. Sometimes a limited number of copies of the next day’s route are printed out. 3) There are a lot of Marchers that are our children’s age or younger. I’m the oldest on the March. 4) The group of musicians that promote singing enjoy singing *This Land* *Is Your Land*. I won’t sing it until we have created at least one verse that describes how we Anglo-Saxons have dispossessed the Native Americans. 5) When the information about camp schedule and events is announced I fail to hear the details. There is very little info printed out so we don’t have a chance to digest the deliberations we’ve made at camp meetings. I appreciated Morgan’s question. It gave us an opportunity to have a serious conversation. Perhaps he will join us on the March. After the Meet-and-Greet event some were shuttled to a restaurant that was providing an evening meal. I chose to return to the B&B. I took a bath and packed up my equipment. Prudy, the B&B host, had washed and dried our laundry. I told her that I also had a delightful night’s sleep. I think it sprinkled periodically through the night. -- Peace, David -- Peace, David

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Salmon: Thanks
by William Salmon via OE 29 May '14

29 May '14

Ken-- Thank you for the update on our research. Gene always is a fresh wind. Bill ----- Original Message ----- From: Ken Fisher via OE To: William Salmon via OE Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2014 8:15 AM Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Archive help, please ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's Gene's and Realistic Living's latest version. On 2014-05-28, at 10:30 PM, William Salmon via OE wrote: Can someone send me a copy of the Social Process Triangles that indicate the location of the 9 Whistle Points. Also, what is the method of accessing the Archives and do a search. Bill Salmon _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's Gene's and Realistic Living's latest version. On 2014-05-28, at 10:30 PM, William Salmon via OE wrote: Can someone send me a copy of the Social Process Triangles that indicate the location of the 9 Whistle Points. Also, what is the method of accessing the Archives and do a search. Bill Salmon _______________________________________________ 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4592 / Virus Database: 3955/7584 - Release Date: 05/29/14

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Salmon: thanks
by William Salmon via OE 29 May '14

29 May '14

John-- Isn't this what colleagiality and memory is all about? Thank you for awakening me again to the difference between the "Whistle Points" and the "Pressure Points." Inner Peace, Bill ----- Original Message ----- From: jlepps(a)pc.jaring.my via OE To: William Salmon via OE Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2014 10:07 AM Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Archive help, please Bill here's a version of the Pressure Points, but I don't have one about the Whistle Points. As I recall, they were related to Myth Factor, Action Factor, Awakenment, Training, and 5 others, 3 of which related to the people, the center of which was a core group. Someone else can fill in the blanks. But they don't plot neatly on the SPT. They're more about how to get something going rather than what needs to get going (pressure points). I hope this is a help. John At 08:30 PM 5/28/2014, you wrote: Can someone send me a copy of the Social Process Triangles that indicate the location of the 9 Whistle Points. Also, what is the method of accessing the Archives and do a search. Bill Salmon _______________________________________________ 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4592 / Virus Database: 3955/7584 - Release Date: 05/29/14

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Salmon: Thanks!
by William Salmon via OE 29 May '14

29 May '14

Ah, you put the "sun" back in "Sunny." Thank you! Inner Peace, Bill ----- Original Message ----- From: Sunny Walker via OE To: dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net ; OE(a)wedgeblade.net Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2014 10:38 AM Subject: [Oe List ...] SP * Corporate Triangles These are PDFs. Sunny Sunny Walker SunWalker Enterprises 303-587-3017 (cell); 303-671-0704 (office) sunwalker(a)comcast.net Aurora, Colorado "What is it that you want to do with the one, wild, precious thing called your life?" ~Mary Oliver ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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: 2014.0.4592 / Virus Database: 3955/7584 - Release Date: 05/29/14

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Judi White open heart surgery
by Lynda Cock via OE 29 May '14

29 May '14

Colleagues, Judi is in Flagler Hospital in St. Augustine. Phone 904-819-2031. The surgery is scheduled for Thurs about 1 p.m. and will take about 5 hours. She will be on a ventilator for the lst day til things get going right. She will be in the hospital for 5-7 days. She wrote: "Preps show need for mitral valve replacement on left and mitral valve repair on other side. Maze procedure to stop aging which might not last. No stents or bypasses needed. Celeste one day on life support to get heart pumping on it's own then the real healing commences. Will be grateful for prayers, candles, love. and light...especially for Dick's well being, too. Dicks # 386-569-4356. Feel it's the right thing to do. " (He also has some health issues.) Some of you with heart issues may understand better than I do some of this language. Her home address: 25 North Lake St, Crescent City, FL 32112.

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SP * Corporate Triangles
by Sunny Walker via OE 29 May '14

29 May '14

These are PDFs. Sunny Sunny Walker SunWalker Enterprises 303-587-3017 (cell); 303-671-0704 (office) sunwalker(a)comcast.net Aurora, Colorado "What is it that you want to do with the one, wild, precious thing called your life?" ~Mary Oliver

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Salmon: Archive help, please
by William Salmon via OE 29 May '14

29 May '14

Can someone send me a copy of the Social Process Triangles that indicate the location of the 9 Whistle Points. Also, what is the method of accessing the Archives and do a search. Bill Salmon

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5//29/14, Spong: Two Popes Made Saints in a Dramatic Act
by Ellie Stock via OE 29 May '14

29 May '14

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR Two Popes Made Saints in a Dramatic Act It was an exciting day in the Vatican on April 27, 2014, probably the most exciting day since the election of Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina to be Pope Francis a little more than a year ago. Prior to that only dark shadows seemed to envelope that church and its leadership. The scandal of sexually abusive priests, which was world wide and systemic, had drained this church’s credibility. That scandal was topped, if that is possible, by the second scandal, which was, for many, even more disillusioning. I refer to the massive cover up that not only embraced the hierarchy, but even threatened to reach the level of Benedict XVI. The fact that Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, perhaps the most guilty person in the American hierarchy of orchestrating the cover up, had been appointed to a prestigious post in the Vatican instead of being sentenced to time in an American jail, was symptomatic of the depth of the problem. In addition a financial scandal involving mismanagement, if not malfeasance, of Vatican finances was obvious. Finally, a sitting pope resigned “for reasons of health” we were told, but such a resignation is hard for Catholics to understand. The claim of possessing ultimate authority in the papal figure is difficult to preserve when there is more than one living ultimate authority. Much of this negativity was pushed aside in the choice of Cardinal Bergoglio to be Pope Francis. From the moment he appeared on the balcony at St. Peter’s Square, he projected a very different image. He declined to appear in royal vestments. We learned that in Buenos Aires he had lived in a humble apartment, not in a cardinal’s palace. He did his own cooking and rode the bus to work. His passion was not for status and authority, but for the poor. His integrity and common touch charmed the world. National leaders everywhere paused to notice. Next Francis began to signal new Vatican attitudes. It was not that he made vast changes, but he gave birth to a new emphasis. “Who I am to judge?” he said, when asked about homosexuality. His predecessor had defined homosexuals as “deviant.” That sounded pretty judgmental to millions of gay Catholics. He began to say conciliatory things toward Roman Catholic scholars who had been silenced or removed from their official teaching positions by Vatican leaders. No, the stigma of their condemnation was not fully removed, but it was loosened considerably and the world of Catholic scholarship began to sense a new day coming. In regard to other “hot button” church issues, such as the ordination of women, divorce, birth control and abortion, no official changes were announced, but a shift in emphasis was obvious and new possibilities began to seem real. Dealing with the poor, addressing wealth inequality, providing hospital care for all simply because they were human began to appear as priorities. The Vatican gendarmes were not called off the rebellious American nuns, but that story did slip quietly to the back pages. Roman Catholic Republican politicians like Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich and even Jeb Bush began to feel the sand shifting underneath their feet. A hard right wing economic budget might now receive papal opposition, so a note of caution entered the debate. Perhaps the gap between the rich and the poor and immigration would become more important issues than closing family planning clinics or forcing more guns into public life. While the more progressive Roman Catholic voices were elated and energized by this new pope, those who had been in power since the death of Pope John XXIII began to grow apprehensive. How could both wings of this church be brought together without either winners or losers became the obvious primary agenda of the new pope. The two most memorable popes of the twentieth century, who represented Catholicism’s two polarities, offered that possibility. The first was John XXIII, who was born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli in 1881 in the little village of Sotto Il Monte in the province of Bergamo. He was oldest child and first son of a sharecropper in a family of thirteen children. One year ago, my wife and I visited his place of birth in Italy. Like the man himself, it was humble and unpretentious. Roncalli received an education only by the intervention and financial resources of his uncle, an act of kindness and generosity that was destined to change the world. Ordained priest in 1904, this man from a peasant background would rise through the ranks of both higher education (he had more than one earned doctorate) and ecclesiastical power. He became a bishop and archbishop in 1925 and served as the apostolic visitor to Bulgaria for eleven years. After a number of other diplomatic posts, which included the opportunity to deal with the Holocaust and its victims and to remove those bishops who in France had cooperated with the Nazis, he was made a cardinal in 1952 by Pope Pius XII, the patrician aristocrat he was to succeed in 1958. It was not an easy election for Roncalli. It took eleven ballots and he was clearly a compromise candidate. The Vatican was in crisis then, not to the extent it is today, but in crisis nonetheless. Pope Pius XII was widely believed to have been pro-Nazi during the recently ended war. He certainly did nothing to help stop the Holocaust and one Catholic author entitled his biography of Pius XII Hitler’s Pope. Compromise candidate or not, in John XXIII’s four year and seven month papacy, he was destined to shake up the Roman Catholic Church more dramatically that it had been shaken in centuries. Very much like Pope Francis, John XXIII had the common touch, but he also had a vision of a church renewed and dealing creatively with the issues of his day. He convened the Second Vatican Council and then presided over a reformation process that matched the intensity of the Counter Reformation of the sixteenth century. He called into leadership the very generation of new creative Catholic scholars who would later be condemned by his successors. One thinks of such people as Hans Kung, Edward Schillebeeckx, Charles Curran, Leonardo Boff, Matthew Fox, Margaret Farley and Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza. As the winds of change blew through this church, it inevitably inspired a reaction among those who had lost power. When John XXIII died, tragically and prematurely, of stomach cancer in 1963, he had become known as “The Good Pope” and he was mourned by Catholics, Protestants, Jews and ordinary people the world over. In his own church, however, the conservative counter attack began almost immediately and the windows through which the new reform breezes of the Second Vatican Council blew were quickly and firmly closed. The Roman Church began a slow, but dramatic, march into yesterday. His successor, Paul VI, shut the door on rethinking attitudes on birth control. Paul VI’s successor, John Paul I,9 was also a liberal and humble man, who might well have carried forward the reforms of Vatican II, but he died only 33 days after being elected. The College of Cardinals then turned to the Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow in Poland, who, after taking the name John Paul II, swung the church hard back to its most uncompromising traditional stands. John Paul II completed the process of closing down the work of Vatican II. It was time for the conservative polarity of this church to have its day. When he chose as his chief deputy the ultra-conservative German prelate, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would someday succeed him, it was clear that the spirit of Vatican II was dead at least for the foreseeable future. John Paul II traveled to more than a 120 countries in an effort to revive and to reinvigorate the faithful. He was instrumental in toppling the Communist rule in his homeland of Poland and was rightly recognized and applauded for that work. He was, however, very much a hardline, right wing pope. Together with Cardinal Ratzinger he implemented an ultra-conservative agenda for this church. That agenda included silencing Catholic scholars and thus ending Catholic creativity. He made the campaign against birth control, abortion and homosexuality so total and so uncompromising that they became the marks of Catholicism. He also built the structure of secrecy and denial out of which the child abuse scandal would evolve. John Paul II filled ecclesiastical posts, bishops, archbishops and cardinals with traditional-thinking Catholic leaders. He was as powerful a champion of conservative Catholicism as John XXIII had been of an open, progressive Catholicism. Because these two popes stood as polar opposites, together they gave Pope Francis a rare opportunity. He paired them and declared both of them saints of the church in a very public celebration. That action, more than any other, would send a signal through the ranks of this church that this new pope was erecting a new foundation for Catholicism upon which he could build a new future. He needed both of these iconic pillars to make his plans work. The traditions of this Church could not be abandoned so he needed the emphasis of John Paul II, but if this church were ever to move into the future, he also needed John XXIII’s commitment to the emerging world, its people and its poor. Pope Francis thus placed them into sainthood together and in doing so brought unity and hope to the Catholic world. Will it work? I hope so. Will Pope Francis live long enough to make the changes lasting ones? Time alone will tell. Can those Catholics for whom John XXIII was a hero tolerate the coupling of the “Good Pope” with John Paul II, who in their minds made intolerance a virtue? It will not be easy, but given the political realities of this church, it was probably essential. Pope Francis’ action reminded me of that time in American history when a free state could not be admitted into the union unless it was coupled with a slave state. No one is helped, however, when the largest Christian body in the world is in disarray as this church has been in recent years, so if this action pulls them together and heads them in a new and positive direction, many will rejoice. At the very least by lifting John XXIII into sainthood, even with John Paul II, Pope Francis has legitimized the good pope’s values and given them new status in this church. We shall watch him with hope. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Gregory A. Baker, via the Internet, writes: Question: I am finishing your book, Jesus for the Non-Religious and have found in you, Bart Ehrman and Tom Harpur…finally…people on the planet who explain Christianity humanly – totally unlike any other experience I’ve had in any “traditional” church. You refer to the Christian alumni…are you aware the single largest Christian denomination in the U.S. today is former Roman Catholics? The Church actually sponsors special programs to recruit them back even though the Holy See asserts it owns their souls and it’s a childish fantasy to think they can leave anyway. I grew up in northern Ohio where we know there were Paleo-Indians living some 12,000 years ago on the very land of my family’s farm. The last of the great Pleistocene glaciers was retreating into Canada. These people I believe were every bit as human as you or I. Yet they were denied the story of Christ, as were millions of other ancient peoples on six continents because they lived before ANY of the Jewish and Christian faiths emerged. I once asked a Baptist preacher (and I’m not making this up) what has happened to Ohio’s Paleo-Indians after death, since they couldn’t have known Christ and received grace and salvation. He grimaced and stated so regretfully that they are burning in hell for eternity; it’s what Christian faith teaches and demands, but he regrets their fate personally. Quite magnanimous, don’t you think? Have you ever addressed in your writings the temporal question…why did any of the Torah and subsequent Christianity story appear when and where it did…and how to treat and interpret Christ for pre-history humans who had no exposure to a faith tradition that you emphatically embrace? Answer: Dear Gregory, Thank you for your letter. I hope you realize that I embrace much of what you call “traditional.” I take it quite seriously. I lived my life as a priest in the Anglican Communion (known in America as the Episcopal Church) for 21 years and then as an elected bishop in that church for 24 years. I am still an active participant in the life of my parish church, St. Peter’s in Morristown, New Jersey. I say the creed every Sunday; I attend the Eucharist. What I don’t do is to take the language of my faith tradition literally. Religious language, religious creeds, religious liturgy, all of them point to truth, none of them captures it. God is not a being, which I or anyone else, can define. God is a presence in which I believe I can live. It is the presence of infinite love, of transcendence and of the deepest mystery. Of course, Jesus is human. The Christian Church has never denied that, but in and through that human medium the Christian Church has claimed that God is experienced as present calling us beyond our limits into what Paul Tillich called a “New Being.” Religion, at its worst, has historically been a barrier-creating activity. It divides the saved from the unsaved, the baptized from the unbaptized, the circumcised from the uncircumcised and the true believer from the heretic. Religious people also seem to consider themselves competent to take on the role of judgment that belongs only to God. That is why I try to introduce people to a Jesus “for the non-religious.” The divine task of judgment does not belong to human beings or to a human institution like the church. When Pope Francis was asked about homosexual priests in the church, he said: “Who am I to judge?” That is exactly correct, but religious leaders, including previous popes, have never been quite able to learn that lesson. The fate of Pleistocene people who roamed the continents of the western hemisphere is God’s business alone; it is not the church’s business. Our task is not to build either religious institutions or even great empires. The only Christian vocation is to enhance life, to share love and to enable all people to be all that they can be. When one is devoted to life one quickly discovers that judgment never enhances life. I view history, not just as the passing of time, but also as the unfolding of consciousness. Consciousness rises in different places at different times and in different circumstances. Human beings are today largely embarrassed at the way we once treated people of color, women, homosexual people, Jews and members of religions different from our own. Consciousness does not move backwards. No society re-enslaves those who have been set free, nor does it re-segregate those who have now broken that barrier. No society takes away the woman’s right to vote, to be educated, to enter the professions, or to control her own reproductive processes once those rights have been extended. No society ever forces back into their closets of anonymity those who have come out of those closets. We will not do that now despite the sound and fury of the new American “Tea Party” members. Those who cannot adjust to new changes in consciousness will simply die eventually as maladjusted people, but the world does not change to accommodate them. I see human religious systems, including Christianity, as only a stage in human development. My vocation as a Christian is to go so deeply into Christianity itself that I will escape all of its human limits, including the limits of its creeds and of its theology. I do not get to that goal by opting out of my faith tradition, but by engaging it and transcending it. I cannot go backwards; I can only go forward. The frontiers of life, including the religious frontiers, are always scary, always anxiety producing, but entering them and crossing them will always be the only way forward. Those whose mission in life is to protect the past will always lose. Welcome to the journey. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements See Bishop Spong in Paris! View his speaking calendar with his Paris dates here .

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5/22/14, Spong: On Spending the Day with Amos, i.e. Professor James H. Cone
by Ellie Stock via OE 28 May '14

28 May '14

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR On Spending the Day with Amos, i.e. Professor James H. Cone So much of Christianity is a delusion, built as it is around power images and institutional claims to possess either an infallible Pope or an inerrant Bible. The Christian Church also traditionally operates out of a definition of life as something evil, fallen and corrupted by original sin, which it has used to enhance guilt and fear in the service of controlling behavior. From the days of the Emperor Constantine in the Fourth century, the Christian Church has frequently been a tool of the state enforcing cultural conformity. Drunk with its own claims to possess ultimate truth, the church has become a primary source in the dehumanization of men and women. Our victims through the centuries were first the Jews. Anti-Semitism is a Christian gift to the world. One finds evidence of this in the New Testament, in the church “fathers,” in the Inquisition, in the leaders of the Reformation and ultimately when we Christians watched benignly as these seeds of violence, long nurtured in the Christian bosom, erupted in the murderous violence that we call the Holocaust, when six million Jews, along with others defined by the Nazi regime as sub-human, were exterminated in Hitler’s ovens. Later in Christian history, Muslims felt the pain of Christian hostility. Vatican-sponsored and supported wars called “The Crusades” in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries put Muslims to death with impunity. The Crusades also planted in our world the hatred that today has given birth to an Islamic hostility toward the “Christian West,” expressed in the rising tide of terrorism in which we now live. How could a religious system, based on the teachings of Jesus, who called us to “love our enemies,” wind up doing these things? Must something in our humanity have to die to make this behavior possible? Other victims of a dehumanizing Christianity throughout our history have been women, who were judged and defined as inadequate, dependent human beings; and gay and lesbian people, who, in our ignorance, were defined as either mentally sick or morally depraved people. The dominant members of Western civilization, who were overwhelmingly Christian, passed laws, designed both to control and to dehumanize those members of our society that they thought were either less than fully human or deviant. We need to recall that the leadership of the Christian Church also led the way in the oppression of people of color. The Pope has owned slaves. It was in the Bible belt of the South that African enslavement was most enthusiastically practiced and defended with the blood of white southerners on the battlefields of Gettysburg, Antietam and Appomattox. When slavery finally died, segregation was born to replace it. In 1876 Republican Rutherford B. Hayes became president because of a deal worked out with the white leaders of four Southern states. They agreed to throw to him their state’s disputed electoral votes in exchange for his commitment to withdraw Union forces from the South and to allow the white South to make segregation legal and binding. Blacks were disenfranchised in that act and the lynching of black people without fear of retaliation became the activity of choice to keep the black population of the South under control. So many black people were hanged by mobs on southern trees that their bodies were referred to in black music as “strange fruit.” White Christian leaders participated in this reign of terror. Somehow Jesus was quoted by them as blessing this horror. The Christian life that Paul had once extolled as “the glorious liberty of the children of God” was now used by these followers of Jesus as the agent of a life-destroying hostility and oppression. Through the centuries Christian theology, while making claims to triumphal power has remained insensitive to the victims of its own violence. Christians have been willing participants in oppression and generally have been unwilling to face the results of our own distortions. We have rather perfumed our violence so that it did not smell as bad as it was. All of these things were forced into my consciousness just recently when I spent the day with James H. Cone, the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Seminary in New York City. His most recent book is entitled, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. This book asks why the white church remained silent while thousands of black citizens were lynched in the religious South and none of these murderers was ever arrested or convicted for these crimes. His earlier books, which included such titles as Black Theology and Black Power; God of the Oppressed, and Martin and Malcolm, had propelled him into the ranks of the premier theologians of our time. Professor Cone rooted his theological work in the lives of the victims of our society. He read the same Bible as his white oppressors, but his focus was on the biblical stories of the plight of the marginalized. God, he noticed, had been on the side of the slaves, not the Egyptians. He read Jesus’ parable of the judgment, in which the ultimate test of the Christian life was not what one believed, but how one acted. Christianity, that parable proclaims, is present when love is unhindered toward those defined as “the least of these,” those whom society defines as lacking in ultimate value. Instead of debating the morality of birth control and abortion, he wanted Christians to be aware of how those who are already born are treated. He listened to the parable of the Good Samaritan, which defined the “neighbor” we are commanded to love to include those who elicit from us our deepest prejudices and our most virulent fears. Though well trained in classical theology (his PhD dissertation at Northwestern University was on the work of Karl Barth), James Cone began to ask questions that classical theology had never thought to ask, and in the process he forced classical theology to face its own irrelevance. “What could Karl Barth possibly mean for black students,” Dr. Cone asked, “who had come from the cotton fields of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, seeking to change the structure of their lives in a society that had defined blacks as non-beings?” So the starting place for his theology came out of his own biography. He was born in 1938 in Fordyce, Arkansas. He was raised in a rural, segregated part of that state, which defined people of color as inferior, even calling them less than human. He lived in the fear that powerless people always experience. The deck was stacked against him. When violated, he could not defend himself; when rejected by the symbols of a society that circumscribed what he was allowed to do within very limited boundaries, his only recourse was to absorb it. Public water fountains, public restrooms, public libraries, public parks and public schools were not available to him. If he dared to challenge any of these practices the law would not defend him. Attempts to change his world were met with vigilante administered “justice.” His segregated school compromised his ability to learn, stocked, as it was, with inferior books and teachers trained in inferior colleges. His one bulwark against this culturally-imposed, debilitating self-image was his parents, who placed a cocoon of love around him. This cocoon was also supported by his attendance at the Macedonia African Methodist-Episcopal (AME) Church, which proclaimed to him the infinite love of God and defined him as a precious child of God. Nonetheless in his inadequate school, he exhibited an intelligence and ability to learn that set him apart. For college he attended Philander Smith, a small, “black only” Little Rock institution, graduating in 1958. Then, seeking a career as a pastor, he gained admission to Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Illinois from which he received his divinity degree in 1961. Seminary was his first step out of his oppressive society. Having gained recognition as one with significant intellectual gifts, he went on to Northwestern University to achieve a Master’s degree in 1963 and a PhD in 1965. His ability to write was hampered, he said, by his lack of training in proper grammar, proper punctuation and the extensive vocabulary that comes with expanded experience. Segregation was still preventing him from communicating what he grasped intellectually quite well. Armed with his new PhD, he discovered that his teaching opportunities were still circumscribed by the same forces that had always defined him as inferior. His only job offer was to teach at Philander Smith. In 1970, he moved away a second time to teach in Adrian College in Michigan. From there Union Seminary, in an act of brilliance, reached into this tiny midwestern school to tap him for its chair in Systematic Theology. At Union Seminary, James Cone turned the theological paradigm upside down. He began his work, not with some obscure doctrine of God, but with the life he had lived as a victim inside the Christian world. He listened to the anger in the Civil Rights Movement; it was his anger. He sought to understand the insights of a black leader like Malcolm X, who articulated that anger. He was not impressed with theologians as eminent as Reinhold Niebuhr, who never seemed to see the black struggle as a Christian concern or even to engage the reality of lynching. He stated that Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man “the devil.” He had little time for this false Christianity of oppression and proceeded to develop his call for the Christian Church to place itself, humbly and obediently at the side of those who had heretofore been its victims. He confronted institutional Christianity, which placed its own wealth and status ahead of challenging a debilitating racism. Above all, he dared to be a prophetic voice of judgment within Christianity whenever it put its institutional well-being ahead of its duty to break the bonds of oppression. In doing these things, he revealed a new vision of God. One cannot hide inside religious clichés in the presence of this man of God. Like the prophet Amos, he is an uncomfortable presence to the religious establishment, but his message is correct. He cannot be dismissed in the language of the 1960’s, as a “communist” or a liberal as people sought to do. James Cone is the voice of authentic Christianity, calling us into a Christian future. We will fail to listen to him at our own peril. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer William P. Wright, Jr., via the Internet, writes: Question: It is a great relief to find you in today's world and to know someone else feels as I do about many things. You have helped me to see that real Christianity need not die to accommodate the reality in which the human race finds itself living today. Since I was born, some 80 years ago, I have been attending the First Baptist Church in my home town, first as a child and now as a mature (hopefully not yet senile) adult. I have seen pastors come and go, sung the hymns and spoken the words of the first century many times and wondered if I were the only person who was grasping to emulate Christ in my life amid a confusing and contradictory belief system. It came to a head when I was asked to dedicate a private cemetery on a Texas ranch for dear friends. How do you speak with integrity of belief when your audience is seemingly traditional and literal? This is what I said: “We are gathered here to consecrate this ground; this special place; a place for meditation, inspiration and for remembrance. Years ago, I was walking in the place here they called the orchard because that was what it was, an apple orchard tended by my friend’s grandfather. The apples he grew, he peddled far and wide to support his family during hard times. My wife was with me that day and she bent and picked up a piece of flint that her ever watchful eyes had observed. It was proof of the presence of human activity at this place hundreds, perhaps thousands of years before. “More recently, the name of that mountain south of us, Mitre Peak, marked this as a special place. It suggested the passage of Spanish explorers for whom it was both a symbol of a bishop’s hat and of the church which served as a guide for the journey. Another reason that this is a special place is that behind us is a spring that produces hundreds of gallons of water in this Chihuahuan Desert. Water is life. There is no life without it. So for these thousands of years the spring has been there and, because it was, life was here also and still is. “Today, however, we are reminded that there is also death here. Death is everywhere. We think of death because it is part of life and those of us gathered here are alive. Mountains, however, also die. Mitre Peak, which looks so strong and eternal, is in the midst of its life cycle just as we are. Millennia from now it will be dissolved by the inexorable forces of erosion, wind, rain, changes of temperature and other processes will carry its bulk to the sea where it will be reconstituted as the sea bed. Perhaps someday it will once again become a mountain. That is the eternal cycle of existence of which we are but a miniscule yet important part. “It is fitting that we think upon these things as we visit this place where our friends and relatives, have passed this life and have begun another phase in this cycle of existence. They still exist, but in ways our limited intelligence cannot imagine. Even as their bodies are re-constituted into their original minerals and elements and then again into plants and animals they are still with us when we come here. “We meditate on their lives and on the lives of those we did not know who came before us. It is in hallowed ground like this that history is recorded and endures. We feel the unbroken chain that ties our earliest ancestors to us for all time. We relive the joys of our association with them in life and we honor those lives with our remembrance. We can learn from their successes and be warned by their failures and just as those ancient travelers, who established their location from sighting Mitre Peak, we can recast our own directions by reflecting on the lives of those who are buried here. “God, we know you as the great architect of this universe. Your energy is transformed in your laboratory of stars into the elements that make visible the world we see and know. Understand that, we know you are with us in every nook and cranny of existence, in the cells of our body, in the dirt beneath our feet, in the birds and animals and in everything that is. In a very real way, we are made from your energy - therefore in your image. “Let us leave today with that knowledge and with the assurance that we, just as those who are honored here, are eternal. As we visit this place let us be reminded of that and let it give us peace and direction for our lives.” Answer: Dear Bill, Thank you for sending me your words at the dedication of a cemetery. You have rightly discerned the fact of human connectedness, not only with those we love, but with those who have formed the chain of life that has bridged the years of human history. You have also plumbed the depths of human meaning and discovered anew that life is much more than simply the passage of time. My study of human origins informs me that the universe is somewhere between 13.7 and 13.8 billion years old. It tells me that everything is made of star dust. It tells me that out of matter life has flowed and out of life consciousness has emerged. The miracle of humanity is discovered when we recognize that out of consciousness, self-consciousness has appeared. Everything that I know about evolution tells me that it is an ongoing, never ending process. For out of self-consciousness, a universal consciousness is being born today and human divisions are being transcended. For Paul that was the very nature of the Christ experience. “In Christ,” he noted, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond nor free.” Human oneness continues as we realize that in Christ there is also neither black nor white, Catholic nor Protestant, gay nor straight, Jew nor Muslim, capitalist nor communist. To see barriers fade is scary to some people because barriers protect us from fear. As the universal consciousness enfolds us, however, the barriers will inevitably disappear and oneness - both human oneness and the oneness of the human with the natural world will become clear. Ultimately, this will also cause us to redefine God. God will no longer be understood as a supernatural being, who invades the world miraculously from somewhere outside it. God will rather be perceived as the Source of Life calling us to live fully, the Source of Love freeing us to love wastefully and as the Ground of Being empowering us to be all that each of us can be. That is the God presence that I find in Jesus and that is why he calls me to step beyond even the boundaries of religion. Increasingly, God is for me a verb to be lived and not a noun to be defined. You seem to be on a similar journey. I feel privileged to have you as a fellow pilgrim. Walk in faith! ~John Shelby Spong Announcements “Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith” ― Paul Tillich

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