- OE - lists.wedgeblade.net

Re: [Oe List ...] Going thru photos
by Zoe Barley 02 Sep '13

02 Sep '13

2 1

Going thru photos
by Zoe Barley 01 Sep '13

01 Sep '13

4 3

"Journey Reflection" August 2013 Top-viewed Blogs
by Lynda Cock 31 Aug '13

31 Aug '13

Dear colleagues, Following are the top-viewed blog posts during August <http://rejourney.blogspot.com/2013/08/journey-reflection-blog-review-august .html> 2013. As always, we appreciate your quote suggestions, comments, and sharing blog posts with others. Happy Holiday and Namaste. Lynda and John >Blog: "Journey Reflection" at 4 links ... Google: <http://www.rejourney.blogspot.com/> www.reJourney.blogspot.com Google Plus: <https://plus.google.com/u/0/114307312715975337692/posts> Journey Reflection/Google Plus Facebook: <https://www.facebook.com/transcribebooks> https://www.facebook.com/transcribebooks Twitter: <https://twitter.com/transcribebooks> https://twitter.com/transcribebooks >Web Page: <http://www.transcribebooks.com/> www.transcribebooks.com >Books: <https://www.amazon.com/author/johnpcock> https://www.amazon.com/author/johnpcock

1 0

Three interesting articles on religion in the New York Times
by Herman Greene 31 Aug '13

31 Aug '13

>From The New York Times Welcome to the Age of Denial Our society no longer values the integrity of scientific fact. http://nyti.ms/19KagUT Catholic Push to Overhaul Immigration Goes to Pews Bishops and priests across the country will preach a coordinated message next month backing changes that include a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants. http://nyti.ms/1dtp895 Out of Enclaves, a Pressure to Accommodate Traditions The rise in the population and the influence of ultra-Orthodox Jews in New York has provoked repeated conflicts with the city over revered practices. http://nyti.ms/14UPpWb -- __________________________________________________ Herman F. Greene 2516 Winningham Road Chapel Hill, NC 27516 919-942-4358 (ph & fax) hfgreenenc(a)gmail.com

2 2

8/29/13, Spong: On the importance of being ordinary
by Ellie Stock 29 Aug '13

29 Aug '13

HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR On the Importance of Being Ordinary Over the past few years, while working on my recent book, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic, I became fascinated with how the author of John’s gospel develops the characters in his narrative. There are more memorable characters in the Fourth Gospel than anywhere else in the New Testament. The disciple Thomas is simply a name on a list in the other gospels, but in John, he becomes a doubter, placing the term “Doubting Thomas” into our language. John also includes a whole series of other crucial characters about whom none of the other gospels seem to have heard. Among them are Nathaniel, the “Beloved Disciple,” Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman by the well and Lazarus. These characters are so beautifully drawn that they not only become indelible, but their uniqueness raises the possibility that they are more symbolic figures than they are actual people of history. In this gospel, they also appear to represent different kinds of responses to Jesus. When one reads John deeply enough, each character seems to become a personality type whose diversity is sufficient that everyone can identify with one of them. Today I want to lift one of the Johannine characters out of the text and present him to you, my readers, as a possible role model, at least for some of us. His name is Andrew and I call him “The Patron Saint of Ordinary People.” Before the Fourth Gospel appeared, the only thing the New Testament tells us about Andrew is that he was the brother of Simon Peter, who everywhere in the New Testament, is portrayed as a leader. Andrew was thus one with only reflected status, primarily known by his relationship to another. Quite often in our still patriarchal world, women are known only as the wives of their husbands, and children are sometimes identified only as the son or daughter of a famous parent. This was the role of Andrew. Those whose primary identity is derived from a more famous person are not necessarily the stars, they are rather the ordinary people. While we continue to live in a culture of heroes, the world actually turns, I believe, on those who are ordinary people. Reading a history of World War II one might get the impression that America fought and won that war with only three soldiers: Eisenhower, MacArthur and Patton. Yet everyone knows that wars are won or lost not by the generals, but by the fighting, bleeding and dying of the foot soldiers, who are normally nameless. Before John’s gospel was written Andrew was a foot soldier, an ordinary person, identified only by his relationship with another. The Fourth Gospel then adds to that scant biography three short but telling stories. In the first chapter of John we are told that Andrew, the ordinary man, brought his brother to Jesus, thus making possible Peter, the extraordinary man. It was Peter, not Andrew, who was destined to become the first leader of the Christian community. In the sixth chapter of John’s gospel Andrew is the one who brings to Jesus the lad with five loaves and two fish. Given the dimensions of the crowd of thousands that needed to be fed, this gift was hardly a drop in the proverbial bucket. Andrew, however, was one who understood that no person’s gift was so small or insignificant that it could not be used and thus felt that it must be appreciated. The story says that Jesus took this gift and used it to feed the multitude. In the twelfth chapter of John’s gospel we are told that a group of Greek foreigners come seeking Jesus. This would make them, by Jewish standards, Gentiles, who were unclean, uncircumcised, non-Kosher and non-Torah observing people. It is Andrew, we are told, who becomes their guide, for no task is too insignificant for him to undertake. So through the dark streets of Jerusalem Andrew led them to the place where Jesus was. At that moment John has Jesus announce “My hour has come.” He then says: “Now the Son of Man will be glorified.” When I am lifted up on the cross, Jesus continues, “I will draw all people to me” and then the world will know “I AM,” then the world will know the meaning of God. Once again Andrew is the expeditor. He is always an ordinary person, but because he did the ordinary thing, great things seemed to happen all around him. No one is unqualified for this kind of role. Take a moment to recall a critical turning point in your own journey and remember who it was who stood with you at that moment, the one who might have said just the right word causing you to choose one path over another and you now recognize that your whole life was determined by that decision. Was that critical person not just an ordinary man or woman? At the risk of being an exhibitionist allow me to relate an intensely personal story that illustrates for me the role of the ordinary person. My father died when I was 12. My mother had not finished the 9th grade in school and thus had little ability to replace my father as our family’s bread winner. We soon fell into rather precarious poverty. For about two years, I was little more than a radically lost, insecure adolescent. Then someone came into my life through no action on my part. My church in Charlotte, North Carolina, chose a new rector. The year was 1946, World War II had come to an end, and the man chosen had just come out of the navy, where he had served as a chaplain on an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific. I do not know the process that enabled him to be chosen, but I do know that this choice determined the course of my life. This man was different from any minister or priest that I had ever known. First, he was only 32 years of age. That fact alone broke my priestly stereotype, for I had never known a priest who wasn’t old. I thought one probably had to be at least 80 to be ordained. Second, he wore white buck shoes. I had never known a priest to wear anything but black. lace-up oxfords. Third, he drove a Ford convertible. I thought priests only drove hearses. Finally, he had a stunningly beautiful wife. I thought clergy wives were dour, wearing only dark brown and navy blue with their hair in a bun at the back of their heads. This woman, however, was dashing and bejeweled. She even smoked cigarettes in a long golden cigarette holder. She was the most sophisticated woman I think I had ever met. I was so deeply drawn to this couple that I volunteered to do anything that enabled me to get closer to them, so I became the only acolyte in my church willing to serve at the 8:00 a.m. communion service. I was not a good acolyte– faithful, but not necessarily competent. My new rector was on the more catholic side of the Episcopal Church and he believed that no one should receive communion without fasting from midnight on. He worried that a bit of undigested toast might corrupt the body of Christ received at the Eucharist. So I came to that service fasting. At that time in my life, however, I was delivering the Charlotte Observer to about 150 houses each morning. This meant I would rise at 4:30 a.m., go to the corner where my papers were dropped off, fold them so that I could throw them on to the lawns of my subscribers, and, then, with my bicycle basket filled, I would set out to deliver them. I arrived home about 6:45 a.m. in sufficient time to shower, dress and catch a bus to my downtown church to do my acolyte duty at 8:00 a.m. By this hour of the morning, however, I was absolutely famished, but still committed to that fast. In the 1928 Prayer Book liturgy, my church used at that time, there was something called the “Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church.” It was two pages long and reminded me of the mercy of God in that it seemed to me to endure forever! Inevitably, before we got through that prayer I began to feel strange, light-headed and very warm. Then I would either faint dead away and have to be carried bodily out of the sanctuary or else I would turn green and throw up leaving my offering at the foot of the altar. I never made it through that prayer. One of the reasons I championed Prayer Book revision in my adult career was to get rid of the “Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church.” Despite this weakness in both my flesh and performance as an acolyte, my rector continued to want me to serve and when that 8:00 a.m. worship was over and I had recovered my equilibrium, this man and I would go half a block up the main street of Charlotte to a restaurant, have breakfast together and talk. I do not recall what we talked about, but I do know that in all my adolescent life, this was the only time an adult talked with me. I had many adults who talked to me or at me, but he talked with me. He even listened to my immature ideas; he asked questions to help me clarify my thinking. It was such a simple thing to do, such an ordinary thing, but to this lonely and lost fifteen year old boy, it was powerfully important and life-giving. I adored that man and wanted to be as much like him as I could be. He became the model for my life and I found my vocation to be a priest in my relationship with him. Was the man a great person? Was he even a great priest? Well, he was to me, but that was not how he was judged by the world. The world saw and judged him to be an ordinary man with ordinary weaknesses. After I left Charlotte to begin my university education he left our church in Charlotte to become the rector of a church in Louisiana. There he fell into an addiction to alcohol. It got so bad that he was finally removed from the priesthood. He died thinking of himself professionally as a failure, but he was a vital person, a change agent to me. The truth is that he was just an ordinary man who simply took the time to talk with a lost teenager. It was something that anybody could have done, but he did it. He was an Andrew. Most of us will not be generals who win battles or elected officials who will rise to political power. We may not become the chief executive of either a small business or of a great corporation, but we can make a difference, a profound difference in the lives of those around us in ordinary ways just by being sensitive, just by being a friend, just by saying the right word at the right time in the right circumstance. We can all be Andrews, the Patron Saint of ordinary people. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Jack from Oklahoma writes: Question: I have heard you support the Unity Church for many reasons. One popular belief, held by Unity, is reincarnation. Do you believe it is possible for persons to be reincarnated? Answer: Dear Jack, Unity appeals to me because of that church’s positive view of human potential and because they do not wallow in guilt and sin as so many Christians seem to do. I have met people in Unity who are inquisitive about reincarnation, though this is clearly not a core teaching of the Unity movement. Prior to writing my book on Eternal Life (Eternal Life: A New Vision-Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell), I made an intensive study of reincarnation. I came out of that study completely agnostic about that question. It seems to me that reincarnation plays the same role in Eastern religious thought that heaven and hell play in Western religious thought. I feel its primary function is to control life here and now. Instead of reward and punishment being meted out in some place after life like heaven and hell, it is meted out in the next incarnation. Sinful people come back as lower caste people or sometimes even as animals. I am not interested in playing the game of judgment. I found no evidence that supports the idea of reincarnation and most of the evidence cited is anecdotal and, to my mind, bogus. It is more a human hope than a human reality. So put me down in the negative column or at least the unconvinced column. I would rather try to master the meaning of the life I have than to speculate about some future or past reincarnation. My best, John Shelby Spong Announcements Common Dreams 3 Conference Midwives of Change:Progressives Shaping Religious Communities From: September 19, 2013 to September 22, 2013 Manning Clark Centre, Australian National University Canberra, AUSTRALIA Common Dreams http://www.commondreams.org.au Click here for more information Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2013 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at johnshelbyspong.com. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 708 Broadway Suite 105 Tacoma, WA 98402 Add us to your address book .

1 0

Resonating with recent comments.
by Isobel A Bishop 29 Aug '13

29 Aug '13

Dear Colleagues, I would like to start by saying how much we enjoy reading the Order Listserve. That will be our preference in any future arrangements. The recent thoughts from Herman and Walt have vibed with me. I said to Jim about a week ago- that although I love and respect my friends at the Local Church we attend- the handful who went through RS1 in the congregation are where I find my shared interior space, as Herman calls it. Is it something to do with the matrix we have in common? I don' t really know, and I do want to underline the need to tell the stories- I am reading a book about Mowanjum right now, and discovering depths of wisdom and grace and hope. So, let's tell our stories folks, we all have them tucked away… Peace be yours, from Spring in Sydney (officially Sept 1st, but already signs are all around us.) Isobel Bishop

2 1

Re: [Oe List ...] information on ICA and colleagues in Guatemala
by Sunny Walker 28 Aug '13

28 Aug '13

Very much so. Joaquina Rodriguez is the one to contact: joaquinaruz(a)yahoo.com.mx. From: oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Janet Sanders Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 2:37 PM To: Order Ecumenical Community Cc: Janet Sanders Subject: [Oe List ...] information on ICA and colleagues in Guatamala Dear Colleagues, I met a wonderful young man from Guetemala this past week and shared with him about ICA. Does anyone know if we still have an office? colleagues? in Guatamala. Warmest regards to all, Jan Sanders, Orillia, Ontario

1 0

Fifth City moving to next stage
by Jean Watts 28 Aug '13

28 Aug '13

Dear colleagues, In ICA and the Order Ecumenical we discovered that our only limitation was our levels of courage, imagination and our own capacity to model and mentor what we were asking others to do. But the ICA solutions, assumptions, models, and perspective alone won't work any longer. Neither will the Rights (Progressive talk) and Responsibility (Republican talk). They MUST be fused together. They are interdependent. All of us need to open up our perspectives to really make a difference today. ICA’s traditional Top methods of ORID conversations and consensus workshops just can’t get what we envisioned in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, & 90’s done today in such a chaotic and turbulent time of self-serving agendas and political games. Dialogue, traditional negotiation, or redistribution/eqalitarian models driven by consensus are evolving into collaborative DESIGN processes that include all points of view and produce Win:Win:Win solutions that replace the blame and be blamed games or us versus them silliness from historical gripes and racial imbalances. Shift New Orleans is just one of many initiatives to design the next America beginning with the recovery and rebuilding issues that exposed the racial and socio-economic imbalances. Other initiatives are emerging in Dallas and Atlanta. This is a rare moment in world history and all of us need to open our minds and join in a quest for unique and powerful solutions that are beneficial to all. ICA’s experience and wisdom has so much to offer. I am asking anyone who might be interested or willing to get involved to contact me for more information. jeanwatts(a)cox.net 504 913 7828 http://www.shiftneworleans.org

2 1

FW: Story of Denver Religious House
by Lynda Cock 28 Aug '13

28 Aug '13

Subject: Story of Denver Religious House We learned to live simply in Religious Houses. We needed people out on the road recruiting courses, raising money, setting up programs, and working with communities, so as few people as possible were assigned to get real jobs to pay the bills. Sometimes that meant that our food budget provided only rather basic foods. We worked hard, but there was also a dynamic of celebration that seemed to magically appear from time to time. Dear Guardian Lee Sugg was helping watch over us when he won a $1000 grocery buying spree in a local store contest and presented it to the Denver House. Some of us old skinflints thought of a whole year's worth of oatmeal or grits, but our always-hungry-youth saw this as a special gift that should be honored by also getting special treats. With a little help, they cased the grocery store to find out some key luxury items that would add a little zip to the daily fare. Special requests were for good cuts of meat and seafood that we could freeze. I can't recall the exact details, but I think we could have four persons with a cart or carts going in different directions in a maybe 20 minute time span. Whatever we could get in those carts up to $1000 was our take-home prize. I recall that it was after the store had closed so the aisles were all ours to race in without interference. Our fastest runners (Larry Hamje was one) were the designated shoppers with the rest of us cheering from the sidelines and pointing the way to things we thought should be in the carts. The store manager was the announcer over the speaker system giving us the On Your Mark, Get Set, and GO signals, as well as calling out the remaining time. I don't recall how we came out money wise, but I recall it was close and we were breathing deeply as the cash register rang up sub-totals. What a grand time we had loading up Lee's pick-up and heading back to the house to sort through those bags and bags of groceries. What a great party we had with some of the special cheeses and meats and fruits that we picked up. I think Martha Lee Sugg also bought some good wine soda to go with our goodies. What wonderful food we enjoyed from the pantry and freezer for many months. Thank you to all the magicians in our corporate lives who knew the needed dynamics of a winning team. This memory was sparked by finding a photo of Lee Sugg being presented the winning ticket for the shopping spree which I am passing on to Martha Lee. Someone probably has a photo of the truck load of groceries and may have corrections or additions to this story. Lynda Cock

8 9

Jaime's 8/29 column/choice in dying
by LAURELCG＠aol.com 26 Aug '13

26 Aug '13

Thank you, Jaime, for sharing your columns. Anyone interested in the right to make their own end-of-life decisions might want to check out _www.compassionandchoices.org_ (http://www.compassionandchoices.org) , a Denver-based group supporting, educating and advocating for "compassionate end-of-life care in legislatures, courtrooms and at bedsides." Jann McGuire In a message dated 8/25/2013 4:43:51 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, svesjaime(a)aol.com writes: j'aime la vie Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate! -----Original Message----- From: Jaime Vergara <pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com> To: editor <editor(a)saipantribune.com> Sent: Sat, Aug 24, 2013 5:38 pm Subject: August 29 The End >From the Internet: As I was lying around, pondering the problems of the world, I realized that at my age I don't really give a rat's ass anymore. … If walking is good for your health, the postman would be immortal. … A whale swims all day, only eats fish, drinks water, but is still fat. … A rabbit runs and hops and only lives 15 years, while … A tortoise doesn't run and does mostly nothing, yet it lives for 150 years. And you tell me to exercise? I don't think so. Just grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked, the good fortune to remember the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference. I love the author’s paraphrase of Francis of Assisi at the end. We are coming to the end of our writing. As one of my soul mates who went through chemo and now lives the struggle of a cancer survivor says, talking of end things do not come easy. Everyone avoids the subject of death. My theological awakening, when the discipline was still considered the queen of sciences, occurred in the 60s when a strapping 18-yr old Pinoy lawyer wannabe chanced on an ecumenical Youth Assembly at Silliman University in Dumaguete City (an institution started by Presbyterians in 1901). I bump into characters like the Nazi-executed martyr Bonheoffer (Freedom), biblical scholar Bultmann (Question of God), theologian Tillich (You are accepted), and the ethical visionaries Niebuhr brothers (Church as social pioneer), et al. We consequently teetered to the left. Add the opening of closed doors and shuttered windows of the musty Basilica by John XXIII, and I found my mind quickly in the expansive quadrangle of the monastic cloister contemplating moves not even common to Jesuits. A sail later, from Manila to SF’s golden gate, by Greyhound to the woods of Kentucky across the prairie of the Midwest, I quickly entangled myself in the on-going theological upheaval at the time, buttressed by a youth revolution and a civil rights movement with truncheons and live dogs. Those were heady days to be playing attention to one’s life. A decade later, an elderly couple, a renowned Princeton University educator and head of Union Theological Seminary in New York when the fierce winds of Vatican II were blowing wildly to the Hudson, and his wife, decided to take on “the freedom of the Holy Spirit” with an intentional overdose of sleeping pills at 75 and 80. Euthanasia was the dreaded term for the act, espoused as far back as Socrates downing the hemlock, restored at the cutting edge of a Christology that saw Jesus not as a victim of Roman connivance to Jewish defensive paroxysm but as a willful act of taking the cross unto one’s entire being. The Van Dusens decided that the springlike burst of joy at birth and its muted wintry chill of death can no longer be just left to passive resignation in nature. As increasingly a feature of birth, death had become an item of choice. I was liberal but not that progressive. Michigan was our vacation State, with friends living in Flint when graffiti was still unseen in neighborhoods, and Muskegon still elicited mirth and mystery from foreign lads like me. There was Jack Kavorkian in Pontiac, bringing sanity to dark corners but later vilified in U.S. media as Dr. Death, sentenced later to 10 years in prison (served 8) for practicing physician-assisted suicide. My Dad at 57 rode a motorbike to supervise his assigned territory in Cagayan, a province in northern Luzon. One late afternoon, in his desire to get home before sundown, he taxed stamina too far and ran head-on to a bus. Medivac to Manila and subjected to the wonders of reconstructive surgery, he could not go through an airport security without triggering off the alarm bell and flashing red lights. Steel had been conjoined to his bones. Retiring early, he joined my brother in Hawaii. Later, in his late 80s, he would pray, “God take me,” for the pains that ailed his body. My last visit with him was when he was 92 at a nursing home, still smiling but lost on figuring out who-the-hell I was. He died at 94 after attempting many times to escape from the home, often found wandering in the middle of the night on the busy highway, perhaps, hoping never to be found alive again. Unhappily for him, one of his sons is a chaplain with the Honolulu police department, so he would invariably be escorted in a flashing limo of Aloha’ s finest back to the ward. My mother lies in a nursing facility in Honolulu where she is assisted to eat at appointed times; she sits and snoozes on her wheel chair awaiting her turn to be guided back to her bed as caregivers are assigned their numerous patients. She turns 94 in September. Ending is not something we decide. We would rather have someone else decide it for us. Most of us would rather be on automatic ride in the great roller coaster of life. To those who still reside in a two-story universe, as my father did, we allot a lot of decisions on an external power we call God. Though the terms hara-kiri and seppuku entered our vocabulary recently, we are not close to contemplating their actual execution. What we do know is that setting endings is a glorious liberating thing. We are bidding adieu to this page and the island of Saipan. Our 10-4 is not casual. It ends with a dot. Period. Jaime Vergara _pinoypanda2031(a)aol.com_ (mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com) yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate! _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

1 0