- OE - lists.wedgeblade.net

Re: [Oe List ...] OE Digest, Vol 5, Issue 21
by Bud Tillinghast 20 Aug '12

20 Aug '12

Does anyone else get the list in the digest form? If you look below you will find six to eight repeats of the original long post. Could I ask if people might do some deleting when responding? Thanks, Bud On 20 Aug 2012, at 13:01, oe-request(a)lists.wedgeblade.net wrote: > Send OE mailing list submissions to > oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > oe-request(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > > You can reach the person managing the list at > oe-owner(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of OE digest..." > Today's Topics: > > 1. Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God (William Salmon) > 2. Re: Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God (Rod Rippel) > 3. Re: Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God (Jack Gilles) > 4. Re: Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God (David Walters) > 5. Re: From The Week: Hearing the voice of God (Del Morril) > 6. Re: [Dialogue] From The Week: Hearing the voice of God > (LAURELCG(a)aol.com) > 7. Re: Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God > (Jaime R Vergara) > 8. Re: Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God (Jim Baumbach) > > From: "William Salmon" <wsalmon(a)cox.net> > Subject: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God > Date: 19 August 2012 20:33:02 BST > To: "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Reply-To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > > > Jim and others-- > On prayer, eh? > From a perspective of Postmodern theologians, the treatment of this topic is a crock. It is another attempt, among billions of evangelical pseudo-scientific attempts, to explain the theological. It can't be done. So much for the death throes of the Modern Worldview. > The best answer ever (so far) is located in the chart of the 144's; Prayer is "THE DOING." It is experienced as: "The Burden," The Passion," "The Intervention," and "The Expenditure." When we live The Awakened Life" we discover we ARE PRAYER that is demonstrated in the DOING. > The existential question is, what kind of prayer are we? > Ah, well. Pissing into the winds of the past only gets our pants wet. Everything lies in the future where the Good News is experienced: ALL IS GOOD, the PRESENT is a gift, the PAST is fogiven/forgotten, and the FUTURE IS OPEN. This, my friends, is prayer. > Later! > Bill > PS: Geez. I wonder if this isn't hearing the voice of God? Well, I'll be damned. wes > ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Wiegel" <jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com> > To: "Colleague Dialogue" <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>; "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 10:02 AM > Subject: [Oe List ...] From The Week: Hearing the voice of God > > >> Seems quite intriguing. Has anyone read this book? >> >> Hearing the voice of God >> >> When an anthropologist studied how evangelicals pray, says Jill Wolfson, she came to a surprising realization. >> >> On a Sunday evening in Palo Alto, Calif., around 50 members of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the Peninsula gathered in a rented room above a popular coffee shop. Before the occasion got under way, the conversation was a friendly and exuberant mix of the mundane and the heady: the gorgeous weather, Christian writer C.S. Lewis, the lusciousness of the strawberries set out as a snack, someone’s car trouble, the problem of demons. Lead pastor Alex Van Riesen, a tall, informal, open-faced man, got everyone settled and quiet. >> >> “For those of you who haven’t been to our church, this is the way it is,” Van Riesen began cheerfully. “Everyone hangs outside eating, drinking coffee, and talking. Then, when you hear the voice of God, you come inside.” >> >> There was a burst of laughter: an evangelical joke for an evangelical Christian audience. Van Riesen then segued to the main event. “Have people been asking you about the book?” he asked the group. “I’ve been getting lots of email about it.” >> >> The book in question, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God, is about the people in this very room. On the makeshift stage next to Van Riesen sat its author, Tanya Luhrmann, who spent two years studying this Vineyard church and another two years at a Vineyard church in Chicago. She knows these believers well. >> >> Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried, and raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home prayer groups whose members reported hearing God communicate to them directly. She hung out, participated, took notes, recorded interviews, and “tried to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate.” Members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings, and getting God’s advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy. >> >> After being introduced jokingly by Van Riesen as Professor Luhrmann to people who have known her for so long as Tanya, she told the group her book does not weigh in on the actual existence of God. Rather, her research focuses on “theory of mind,” how we conceptualize our minds and those of others. In this case, she investigated how the practice of prayer can train a person to hear what they determine to be God’s voice. >> >> “I do think that if God does speak to someone, God speaks through the human mind,” she explained. “As an anthropologist, I feel I can say something about the social, cultural, and psychological features of what that person is experiencing. I came into this project wanting to understand the question: How are rational, sensible, educated people able to sustain faith in an invisible being in an environment of skepticism?” >> >> Luhrmann’s provocative theory is that the church teaches those who pray to use their minds differently than they do in everyday life. They begin by holding conversations with God in their heads, modeled on the kind of chummy conversations they’d have with their best friends. As they talk to Him, tell Him about their problems, and imagine His wise counsel and loving response, they are training their thoughts, much as people use weights to train their muscles. The church encourages them to tune in to sounds, images, and feelings that are louder or more intense or more unfamiliar or more powerful—and to interpret these internal cues as the external voice of God. >> >> “I came in with a set of stereotypes of evangelicals—the kind that you’d expect from someone in the academy,” she said. “I came out with more respect for the religious process...how private and precious the experience of God can be for people.” >> >> She read from her book’s final chapter: “I have said that I do not presume to know ultimate reality. But it is also true that through the process of this journey, in my own way, I have come to know God.” >> >> Luhrmann’s work has roots deep in her intellectual and emotional past. She describes herself as an anthropologist with one foot in psychology. She could easily add that her other foot is in theology and both hands have a firm grasp on philosophy. >> >> Her upbringing was that of a “spiritual mutt.” In the book’s preface and acknowledgments, she writes that she has been thinking about God ever since her maternal grandfather, a Baptist minister, “walked across the park with me when I was 6 and tried to explain who he thought God was.” His daughter—Luhrmann’s mother—took her children to the more free-form Unitarian church. Luhrmann’s paternal grandfather was a Christian Scientist whose son—Luhrmann’s father—became a medical doctor, a psychiatrist. The eldest of three children, Tanya was raised in a suburban New Jersey neighborhood, where she helped Orthodox Jewish neighbors as a shabbas goy, a gentile who assists with activities that are restricted on the Sabbath, such as turning on light switches. “I came from this background where I knew smart, good people whom I loved, but who came down on very different positions on the existence of God—not only on the yes-no dimension, but on who God was.” >> >> As a Harvard freshman, she had thoughts about Immanuel Kant that, in many ways, set the course of her career. She decided that the philosopher was “cheating” when he “explained away” the irrational. “I’ve always been intrigued by myths and stories and the way people construct their world. People live in the narrative, and that is more important than their logical sensibility in many ways. So I switched from philosophy to folklore....I was just so curious about people and about the way they come to hold their beliefs—even in the face of evidence to the contrary.” >> >> An academic mentor encouraged her to pursue graduate studies at the University of Chicago, but a chance encounter with a volume in the Harvard bookstore sent her in a different direction. “It was a book that told you how to be a witch,” she recalls with a laugh. “I was amazed by this. You can learn that?” >> >> She headed to Cambridge University for graduate studies, from whence she could go “hang out in London with all these pagans and magicians—for the most part educated and middle-class people—and plunge into this really batty dissertation on modern witches.” >> >> The goal was not to rule on the validity of magic. Luhrmann was more interested in the magical process, in what happened in the minds of the practitioners. “I was really taken by my observation that something does happen. I didn’t quite know how to think about it, but they experienced something directly.” >> >> Luhrmann did “what anthropologists do” and participated in their world by joining their groups, reading their books, and performing rituals. For 30 minutes a day for nine months, she practiced seeing with her mind’s eye, following instructions such as: Build up in imagination a journey from your physical plane home to your ideal room. >> >> What startled her was that her witchcraft self-training worked. Her internal awareness seemed to shift; her senses felt more alive and alert. She had her own supernatural experience: One night, after she’d done some pleasurable and immersive reading about the early Celts, six druids appeared outside her window and just as suddenly vanished. “Had they been there in the flesh? I thought not,” she writes in When God Talks Back, but the vivid, singular experience led her to wonder “for many years if something about the practice associated with magic made these supernatural experiences more common. When I encountered the same spiritual techniques in experiential evangelical Christianity, I was determined to find out.” >> >> In 2007, to better understand if and how spiritual practice impacts the mind, Luhrmann randomly divided Christian volunteers into groups: One listened on iPods for 30 minutes a day to lectures on the Gospels, while another participated in a more interactive, imagination-rich way, similar to the prayer style of Vineyard members. Their recordings invited them to see, hear, and touch God in the mind’s eye, to carry on a dialogue with Jesus. >> >> “I found that after a month of prayer practice, people reported more vivid mental imagery than those who listened to the lectures,” she says. “They used mental imagery more readily and had somewhat better perceptual attention, and they reported more unusual sensory experience. In short, they attended to their inner experience more seriously, and that altered how real that experience became for them.” >> >> The night before Luhrmann appeared at the Vineyard congregation, she read and answered questions at a Bay Area bookstore. She traced the modern history of the evangelical movement from its hippie, Jesus-freak roots of the 1960s to its current, mostly conservative, mostly middle-class state. She talked about the people whose stories give the book its narrative pull, people whose faith proved more complex than she had imagined. >> >> This was an entirely different crowd. A couple of atheists ranted about how people who talk to God must be nuts. Another person in the audience, a little more measured, wanted Luhrmann to address the impact that conservative evangelicals are having on the country’s political landscape. >> >> It is not a small impact. Of the many baby boomers who once stopped going to churches, half have returned to religious practices, but not to the mainstream services of their childhood. They have flocked to churches similar to the Vineyard. A recent study found that nearly 40 percent of Americans said that the main reason they practice religion was “to forge a personal relationship with God.” Some call this movement the country’s fourth Great Awakening—a reference to other eras in American history in which religious fervor shaped the national agenda. >> >> While Luhrmann intentionally avoided politics in the book, it comes up in interviews and reviews, as readers and critics wonder if the author “ever engaged her subjects in a lively conversation about gay marriage or evolution.” Her answer is that conservative evangelicals and secular liberals are at such odds politically because they think about life very differently. If political progressives really want to stop scratching their heads over why evangelicals get so upset about same-sex marriage and health-care reform, they need to understand how evangelicals think about God. >> >> “Secular liberals want to create the social conditions that allow everyday people, behaving the way ordinary people behave, to have fewer bad outcomes,” she says. “When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately about what kind of person they are trying to become—what humans could and should be, rather than who they are. From this perspective, the problem with government is that it steps in when people fall short.” >> >> Hanging out with believers—whom she found “smarter and more varied than many liberals realize”—has given her some insight that could double as political advice. “If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear. They should talk about the kind of people we are aiming to be and about the transformational journey that any choice will take us on.” >> >> Reprinted with permission from Stanford magazine, published by Stanford Alumni Association, Stanford University. >> >> >> >> – Sent from The Week iPad edition – >> All You Need To Know About Everything That Matters >> Download the app and try The Week for free: http://iTunes.com/apps/theweekmagazineus >> >> >> Jim Wiegel >> Jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com >> >> “One cannot live in the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” – Carl Jung >> >> Partners in Participation Upcoming public course opportunities: >> ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 11-12, 2012 >> ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012 >> The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Sept 7, 2012 >> Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, 2012 >> See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website for further details. >> _______________________________________________ >> 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: 2012.0.2197 / Virus Database: 2437/5208 - Release Date: 08/18/12 > > > > > > From: "Rod Rippel" <rodrippel(a)cox.net> > Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God > Date: 19 August 2012 21:10:56 BST > To: "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Reply-To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > > > Thanks Jim and Bill. It sounds like the old Positive Thinking of Norman Peale (circa. WW II) > Rod Rippel > > -----Original Message----- From: William Salmon > Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 12:33 PM > To: Order Ecumenical Community > Subject: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God > > Jim and others-- > On prayer, eh? > From a perspective of Postmodern theologians, the treatment of this > topic is a crock. It is another attempt, among billions of evangelical > pseudo-scientific attempts, to explain the theological. It can't be done. So > much for the death throes of the Modern Worldview. > The best answer ever (so far) is located in the chart of the 144's; > Prayer is "THE DOING." It is experienced as: "The Burden," The Passion," > "The Intervention," and "The Expenditure." When we live The Awakened Life" > we discover we ARE PRAYER that is demonstrated in the DOING. > The existential question is, what kind of prayer are we? > Ah, well. Pissing into the winds of the past only gets our pants wet. > Everything lies in the future where the Good News is experienced: ALL IS > GOOD, the PRESENT is a gift, the PAST is fogiven/forgotten, and the FUTURE > IS OPEN. This, my friends, is prayer. > Later! > Bill > PS: Geez. I wonder if this isn't hearing the voice of God? Well, I'll be > damned. wes > ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Wiegel" <jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com> > To: "Colleague Dialogue" <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>; "Order Ecumenical > Community" <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 10:02 AM > Subject: [Oe List ...] From The Week: Hearing the voice of God > > >> Seems quite intriguing. Has anyone read this book? >> >> Hearing the voice of God >> >> When an anthropologist studied how evangelicals pray, says Jill Wolfson, she came to a surprising realization. >> >> On a Sunday evening in Palo Alto, Calif., around 50 members of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the Peninsula gathered in a rented room above a popular coffee shop. Before the occasion got under way, the conversation was a friendly and exuberant mix of the mundane and the heady: the gorgeous weather, Christian writer C.S. Lewis, the lusciousness of the strawberries set out as a snack, someone’s car trouble, the problem of demons. Lead pastor Alex Van Riesen, a tall, informal, open-faced man, got everyone settled and quiet. >> >> “For those of you who haven’t been to our church, this is the way it is,” Van Riesen began cheerfully. “Everyone hangs outside eating, drinking coffee, and talking. Then, when you hear the voice of God, you come inside.” >> >> There was a burst of laughter: an evangelical joke for an evangelical Christian audience. Van Riesen then segued to the main event. “Have people been asking you about the book?” he asked the group. “I’ve been getting lots of email about it.” >> >> The book in question, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God, is about the people in this very room. On the makeshift stage next to Van Riesen sat its author, Tanya Luhrmann, who spent two years studying this Vineyard church and another two years at a Vineyard church in Chicago. She knows these believers well. >> >> Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried, and raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home prayer groups whose members reported hearing God communicate to them directly. She hung out, participated, took notes, recorded interviews, and “tried to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate.” Members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings, and getting God’s advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy. >> >> After being introduced jokingly by Van Riesen as Professor Luhrmann to people who have known her for so long as Tanya, she told the group her book does not weigh in on the actual existence of God. Rather, her research focuses on “theory of mind,” how we conceptualize our minds and those of others. In this case, she investigated how the practice of prayer can train a person to hear what they determine to be God’s voice. >> >> “I do think that if God does speak to someone, God speaks through the human mind,” she explained. “As an anthropologist, I feel I can say something about the social, cultural, and psychological features of what that person is experiencing. I came into this project wanting to understand the question: How are rational, sensible, educated people able to sustain faith in an invisible being in an environment of skepticism?” >> >> Luhrmann’s provocative theory is that the church teaches those who pray to use their minds differently than they do in everyday life. They begin by holding conversations with God in their heads, modeled on the kind of chummy conversations they’d have with their best friends. As they talk to Him, tell Him about their problems, and imagine His wise counsel and loving response, they are training their thoughts, much as people use weights to train their muscles. The church encourages them to tune in to sounds, images, and feelings that are louder or more intense or more unfamiliar or more powerful—and to interpret these internal cues as the external voice of God. >> >> “I came in with a set of stereotypes of evangelicals—the kind that you’d expect from someone in the academy,” she said. “I came out with more respect for the religious process...how private and precious the experience of God can be for people.” >> >> She read from her book’s final chapter: “I have said that I do not presume to know ultimate reality. But it is also true that through the process of this journey, in my own way, I have come to know God.” >> >> Luhrmann’s work has roots deep in her intellectual and emotional past. She describes herself as an anthropologist with one foot in psychology. She could easily add that her other foot is in theology and both hands have a firm grasp on philosophy. >> >> Her upbringing was that of a “spiritual mutt.” In the book’s preface and acknowledgments, she writes that she has been thinking about God ever since her maternal grandfather, a Baptist minister, “walked across the park with me when I was 6 and tried to explain who he thought God was.” His daughter—Luhrmann’s mother—took her children to the more free-form Unitarian church. Luhrmann’s paternal grandfather was a Christian Scientist whose son—Luhrmann’s father—became a medical doctor, a psychiatrist. The eldest of three children, Tanya was raised in a suburban New Jersey neighborhood, where she helped Orthodox Jewish neighbors as a shabbas goy, a gentile who assists with activities that are restricted on the Sabbath, such as turning on light switches. “I came from this background where I knew smart, good people whom I loved, but who came down on very different positions on the existence of God—not only on the yes-no dimension, but on who God was.” >> >> As a Harvard freshman, she had thoughts about Immanuel Kant that, in many ways, set the course of her career. She decided that the philosopher was “cheating” when he “explained away” the irrational. “I’ve always been intrigued by myths and stories and the way people construct their world. People live in the narrative, and that is more important than their logical sensibility in many ways. So I switched from philosophy to folklore....I was just so curious about people and about the way they come to hold their beliefs—even in the face of evidence to the contrary.” >> >> An academic mentor encouraged her to pursue graduate studies at the University of Chicago, but a chance encounter with a volume in the Harvard bookstore sent her in a different direction. “It was a book that told you how to be a witch,” she recalls with a laugh. “I was amazed by this. You can learn that?” >> >> She headed to Cambridge University for graduate studies, from whence she could go “hang out in London with all these pagans and magicians—for the most part educated and middle-class people—and plunge into this really batty dissertation on modern witches.” >> >> The goal was not to rule on the validity of magic. Luhrmann was more interested in the magical process, in what happened in the minds of the practitioners. “I was really taken by my observation that something does happen. I didn’t quite know how to think about it, but they experienced something directly.” >> >> Luhrmann did “what anthropologists do” and participated in their world by joining their groups, reading their books, and performing rituals. For 30 minutes a day for nine months, she practiced seeing with her mind’s eye, following instructions such as: Build up in imagination a journey from your physical plane home to your ideal room. >> >> What startled her was that her witchcraft self-training worked. Her internal awareness seemed to shift; her senses felt more alive and alert. She had her own supernatural experience: One night, after she’d done some pleasurable and immersive reading about the early Celts, six druids appeared outside her window and just as suddenly vanished. “Had they been there in the flesh? I thought not,” she writes in When God Talks Back, but the vivid, singular experience led her to wonder “for many years if something about the practice associated with magic made these supernatural experiences more common. When I encountered the same spiritual techniques in experiential evangelical Christianity, I was determined to find out.” >> >> In 2007, to better understand if and how spiritual practice impacts the mind, Luhrmann randomly divided Christian volunteers into groups: One listened on iPods for 30 minutes a day to lectures on the Gospels, while another participated in a more interactive, imagination-rich way, similar to the prayer style of Vineyard members. Their recordings invited them to see, hear, and touch God in the mind’s eye, to carry on a dialogue with Jesus. >> >> “I found that after a month of prayer practice, people reported more vivid mental imagery than those who listened to the lectures,” she says. “They used mental imagery more readily and had somewhat better perceptual attention, and they reported more unusual sensory experience. In short, they attended to their inner experience more seriously, and that altered how real that experience became for them.” >> >> The night before Luhrmann appeared at the Vineyard congregation, she read and answered questions at a Bay Area bookstore. She traced the modern history of the evangelical movement from its hippie, Jesus-freak roots of the 1960s to its current, mostly conservative, mostly middle-class state. She talked about the people whose stories give the book its narrative pull, people whose faith proved more complex than she had imagined. >> >> This was an entirely different crowd. A couple of atheists ranted about how people who talk to God must be nuts. Another person in the audience, a little more measured, wanted Luhrmann to address the impact that conservative evangelicals are having on the country’s political landscape. >> >> It is not a small impact. Of the many baby boomers who once stopped going to churches, half have returned to religious practices, but not to the mainstream services of their childhood. They have flocked to churches similar to the Vineyard. A recent study found that nearly 40 percent of Americans said that the main reason they practice religion was “to forge a personal relationship with God.” Some call this movement the country’s fourth Great Awakening—a reference to other eras in American history in which religious fervor shaped the national agenda. >> >> While Luhrmann intentionally avoided politics in the book, it comes up in interviews and reviews, as readers and critics wonder if the author “ever engaged her subjects in a lively conversation about gay marriage or evolution.” Her answer is that conservative evangelicals and secular liberals are at such odds politically because they think about life very differently. If political progressives really want to stop scratching their heads over why evangelicals get so upset about same-sex marriage and health-care reform, they need to understand how evangelicals think about God. >> >> “Secular liberals want to create the social conditions that allow everyday people, behaving the way ordinary people behave, to have fewer bad outcomes,” she says. “When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately about what kind of person they are trying to become—what humans could and should be, rather than who they are. From this perspective, the problem with government is that it steps in when people fall short.” >> >> Hanging out with believers—whom she found “smarter and more varied than many liberals realize”—has given her some insight that could double as political advice. “If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear. They should talk about the kind of people we are aiming to be and about the transformational journey that any choice will take us on.” >> >> Reprinted with permission from Stanford magazine, published by Stanford Alumni Association, Stanford University. >> >> >> >> – Sent from The Week iPad edition – >> All You Need To Know About Everything That Matters >> Download the app and try The Week for free: http://iTunes.com/apps/theweekmagazineus >> >> >> Jim Wiegel >> Jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com >> >> “One cannot live in the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” – Carl Jung >> >> Partners in Participation Upcoming public course opportunities: >> ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 11-12, 2012 >> ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012 >> The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Sept 7, 2012 >> Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, 2012 >> See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website for further details. >> _______________________________________________ >> 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: 2012.0.2197 / Virus Database: 2437/5208 - Release Date: 08/18/12 >> > > _______________________________________________ > OE mailing list > OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net > > > > > From: Jack Gilles <icabombay(a)igc.org> > Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God > Date: 19 August 2012 21:12:47 BST > To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Reply-To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > > > Amen, brother Bill, Amen! > > Jack > On Aug 19, 2012, at 2:33 PM, William Salmon wrote: > >> Jim and others-- >> On prayer, eh? >> From a perspective of Postmodern theologians, the treatment of this topic is a crock. It is another attempt, among billions of evangelical pseudo-scientific attempts, to explain the theological. It can't be done. So much for the death throes of the Modern Worldview. >> The best answer ever (so far) is located in the chart of the 144's; Prayer is "THE DOING." It is experienced as: "The Burden," The Passion," "The Intervention," and "The Expenditure." When we live The Awakened Life" we discover we ARE PRAYER that is demonstrated in the DOING. >> The existential question is, what kind of prayer are we? >> Ah, well. Pissing into the winds of the past only gets our pants wet. Everything lies in the future where the Good News is experienced: ALL IS GOOD, the PRESENT is a gift, the PAST is fogiven/forgotten, and the FUTURE IS OPEN. This, my friends, is prayer. >> Later! >> Bill >> PS: Geez. I wonder if this isn't hearing the voice of God? Well, I'll be damned. wes >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Wiegel" <jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com> >> To: "Colleague Dialogue" <dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net>; "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> >> Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 10:02 AM >> Subject: [Oe List ...] From The Week: Hearing the voice of God >> >> >>> Seems quite intriguing. Has anyone read this book? >>> >>> Hearing the voice of God >>> >>> When an anthropologist studied how evangelicals pray, says Jill Wolfson, she came to a surprising realization. >>> >>> On a Sunday evening in Palo Alto, Calif., around 50 members of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the Peninsula gathered in a rented room above a popular coffee shop. Before the occasion got under way, the conversation was a friendly and exuberant mix of the mundane and the heady: the gorgeous weather, Christian writer C.S. Lewis, the lusciousness of the strawberries set out as a snack, someone’s car trouble, the problem of demons. Lead pastor Alex Van Riesen, a tall, informal, open-faced man, got everyone settled and quiet. >>> >>> “For those of you who haven’t been to our church, this is the way it is,” Van Riesen began cheerfully. “Everyone hangs outside eating, drinking coffee, and talking. Then, when you hear the voice of God, you come inside.” >>> >>> There was a burst of laughter: an evangelical joke for an evangelical Christian audience. Van Riesen then segued to the main event. “Have people been asking you about the book?” he asked the group. “I’ve been getting lots of email about it.” >>> >>> The book in question, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God, is about the people in this very room. On the makeshift stage next to Van Riesen sat its author, Tanya Luhrmann, who spent two years studying this Vineyard church and another two years at a Vineyard church in Chicago. She knows these believers well. >>> >>> Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried, and raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home prayer groups whose members reported hearing God communicate to them directly. She hung out, participated, took notes, recorded interviews, and “tried to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate.” Members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings, and getting God’s advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy. >>> >>> After being introduced jokingly by Van Riesen as Professor Luhrmann to people who have known her for so long as Tanya, she told the group her book does not weigh in on the actual existence of God. Rather, her research focuses on “theory of mind,” how we conceptualize our minds and those of others. In this case, she investigated how the practice of prayer can train a person to hear what they determine to be God’s voice. >>> >>> “I do think that if God does speak to someone, God speaks through the human mind,” she explained. “As an anthropologist, I feel I can say something about the social, cultural, and psychological features of what that person is experiencing. I came into this project wanting to understand the question: How are rational, sensible, educated people able to sustain faith in an invisible being in an environment of skepticism?” >>> >>> Luhrmann’s provocative theory is that the church teaches those who pray to use their minds differently than they do in everyday life. They begin by holding conversations with God in their heads, modeled on the kind of chummy conversations they’d have with their best friends. As they talk to Him, tell Him about their problems, and imagine His wise counsel and loving response, they are training their thoughts, much as people use weights to train their muscles. The church encourages them to tune in to sounds, images, and feelings that are louder or more intense or more unfamiliar or more powerful—and to interpret these internal cues as the external voice of God. >>> >>> “I came in with a set of stereotypes of evangelicals—the kind that you’d expect from someone in the academy,” she said. “I came out with more respect for the religious process...how private and precious the experience of God can be for people.” >>> >>> She read from her book’s final chapter: “I have said that I do not presume to know ultimate reality. But it is also true that through the process of this journey, in my own way, I have come to know God.” >>> >>> Luhrmann’s work has roots deep in her intellectual and emotional past. She describes herself as an anthropologist with one foot in psychology. She could easily add that her other foot is in theology and both hands have a firm grasp on philosophy. >>> >>> Her upbringing was that of a “spiritual mutt.” In the book’s preface and acknowledgments, she writes that she has been thinking about God ever since her maternal grandfather, a Baptist minister, “walked across the park with me when I was 6 and tried to explain who he thought God was.” His daughter—Luhrmann’s mother—took her children to the more free-form Unitarian church. Luhrmann’s paternal grandfather was a Christian Scientist whose son—Luhrmann’s father—became a medical doctor, a psychiatrist. The eldest of three children, Tanya was raised in a suburban New Jersey neighborhood, where she helped Orthodox Jewish neighbors as a shabbas goy, a gentile who assists with activities that are restricted on the Sabbath, such as turning on light switches. “I came from this background where I knew smart, good people whom I loved, but who came down on very different positions on the existence of God—not only on the yes-no dimension, but on who God was.” >>> >>> As a Harvard freshman, she had thoughts about Immanuel Kant that, in many ways, set the course of her career. She decided that the philosopher was “cheating” when he “explained away” the irrational. “I’ve always been intrigued by myths and stories and the way people construct their world. People live in the narrative, and that is more important than their logical sensibility in many ways. So I switched from philosophy to folklore....I was just so curious about people and about the way they come to hold their beliefs—even in the face of evidence to the contrary.” >>> >>> An academic mentor encouraged her to pursue graduate studies at the University of Chicago, but a chance encounter with a volume in the Harvard bookstore sent her in a different direction. “It was a book that told you how to be a witch,” she recalls with a laugh. “I was amazed by this. You can learn that?” >>> >>> She headed to Cambridge University for graduate studies, from whence she could go “hang out in London with all these pagans and magicians—for the most part educated and middle-class people—and plunge into this really batty dissertation on modern witches.” >>> >>> The goal was not to rule on the validity of magic. Luhrmann was more interested in the magical process, in what happened in the minds of the practitioners. “I was really taken by my observation that something does happen. I didn’t quite know how to think about it, but they experienced something directly.” >>> >>> Luhrmann did “what anthropologists do” and participated in their world by joining their groups, reading their books, and performing rituals. For 30 minutes a day for nine months, she practiced seeing with her mind’s eye, following instructions such as: Build up in imagination a journey from your physical plane home to your ideal room. >>> >>> What startled her was that her witchcraft self-training worked. Her internal awareness seemed to shift; her senses felt more alive and alert. She had her own supernatural experience: One night, after she’d done some pleasurable and immersive reading about the early Celts, six druids appeared outside her window and just as suddenly vanished. “Had they been there in the flesh? I thought not,” she writes in When God Talks Back, but the vivid, singular experience led her to wonder “for many years if something about the practice associated with magic made these supernatural experiences more common. When I encountered the same spiritual techniques in experiential evangelical Christianity, I was determined to find out.” >>> >>> In 2007, to better understand if and how spiritual practice impacts the mind, Luhrmann randomly divided Christian volunteers into groups: One listened on iPods for 30 minutes a day to lectures on the Gospels, while another participated in a more interactive, imagination-rich way, similar to the prayer style of Vineyard members. Their recordings invited them to see, hear, and touch God in the mind’s eye, to carry on a dialogue with Jesus. >>> >>> “I found that after a month of prayer practice, people reported more vivid mental imagery than those who listened to the lectures,” she says. “They used mental imagery more readily and had somewhat better perceptual attention, and they reported more unusual sensory experience. In short, they attended to their inner experience more seriously, and that altered how real that experience became for them.” >>> >>> The night before Luhrmann appeared at the Vineyard congregation, she read and answered questions at a Bay Area bookstore. She traced the modern history of the evangelical movement from its hippie, Jesus-freak roots of the 1960s to its current, mostly conservative, mostly middle-class state. She talked about the people whose stories give the book its narrative pull, people whose faith proved more complex than she had imagined. >>> >>> This was an entirely different crowd. A couple of atheists ranted about how people who talk to God must be nuts. Another person in the audience, a little more measured, wanted Luhrmann to address the impact that conservative evangelicals are having on the country’s political landscape. >>> >>> It is not a small impact. Of the many baby boomers who once stopped going to churches, half have returned to religious practices, but not to the mainstream services of their childhood. They have flocked to churches similar to the Vineyard. A recent study found that nearly 40 percent of Americans said that the main reason they practice religion was “to forge a personal relationship with God.” Some call this movement the country’s fourth Great Awakening—a reference to other eras in American history in which religious fervor shaped the national agenda. >>> >>> While Luhrmann intentionally avoided politics in the book, it comes up in interviews and reviews, as readers and critics wonder if the author “ever engaged her subjects in a lively conversation about gay marriage or evolution.” Her answer is that conservative evangelicals and secular liberals are at such odds politically because they think about life very differently. If political progressives really want to stop scratching their heads over why evangelicals get so upset about same-sex marriage and health-care reform, they need to understand how evangelicals think about God. >>> >>> “Secular liberals want to create the social conditions that allow everyday people, behaving the way ordinary people behave, to have fewer bad outcomes,” she says. “When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately about what kind of person they are trying to become—what humans could and should be, rather than who they are. From this perspective, the problem with government is that it steps in when people fall short.” >>> >>> Hanging out with believers—whom she found “smarter and more varied than many liberals realize”—has given her some insight that could double as political advice. “If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear. They should talk about the kind of people we are aiming to be and about the transformational journey that any choice will take us on.” >>> >>> Reprinted with permission from Stanford magazine, published by Stanford Alumni Association, Stanford University. >>> >>> >>> >>> – Sent from The Week iPad edition – >>> All You Need To Know About Everything That Matters >>> Download the app and try The Week for free: http://iTunes.com/apps/theweekmagazineus >>> >>> >>> Jim Wiegel >>> Jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com >>> >>> “One cannot live in the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” – Carl Jung >>> >>> Partners in Participation Upcoming public course opportunities: >>> ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 11-12, 2012 >>> ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012 >>> The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Sept 7, 2012 >>> Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, 2012 >>> See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website for further details. >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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: 2012.0.2197 / Virus Database: 2437/5208 - Release Date: 08/18/12 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> OE mailing list >> OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net >> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net > > > > > > From: "David Walters" <walters(a)alaweb.com> > Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God > Date: 19 August 2012 22:08:42 BST > To: "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Reply-To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > > > Hold on there Rev. William Salmon. This article is about reflections of a anthropologist on her encounters with people of varied religious experiences. Non one in these groups nor the author ever had the experience of RS-1 or any of its kin. Nobody has told them that there is no three story universe or walked them thru the Tillich paper. > > Tanya Luhrmann has attempted to document the experiences and practices of a faith community in California called the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the Peninsula. They may not worship pray like folks in your Methodist congregation in Salinas or what we used to do so early in morning in the Great Hall at Chicago: Centrum. One thing for sure, this CA congregation is definitely not your father's church. Nor is anything like Martin Luther or John Calvin's congregation. > > The real question that needs to be asked is what can we learn from Tanya Luhrmann's book relative to how we can create new intentional communities that understand that life is good received, approved and open to the future. > -David Walters > > --- wsalmon(a)cox.net wrote: > Jim and others-- > On prayer, eh? > From a perspective of Postmodern theologians, the treatment of this > topic is a crock. It is another attempt, among billions of evangelical > pseudo-scientific attempts, to explain the theological. It can't be done. So > much for the death throes of the Modern Worldview. > The best answer ever (so far) is located in the chart of the 144's; > Prayer is "THE DOING." It is experienced as: "The Burden," The Passion," > "The Intervention," and "The Expenditure." When we live The Awakened Life" > we discover we ARE PRAYER that is demonstrated in the DOING. > The existential question is, what kind of prayer are we? > Ah, well. Pissing into the winds of the past only gets our pants wet. > Everything lies in the future where the Good News is experienced: ALL IS > GOOD, the PRESENT is a gift, the PAST is fogiven/forgotten, and the FUTURE > IS OPEN. This, my friends, is prayer. > Later! > Bill > PS: Geez. I wonder if this isn't hearing the voice of God? Well, I'll be > damned. wes > ----- Original Message ----- > > From The Week: Hearing the voice of God >> Seems quite intriguing. Has anyone read this book? >> Hearing the voice of God >> When an anthropologist studied how evangelicals pray, says Jill Wolfson, >> she came to a surprising realization. >> >> On a Sunday evening in Palo Alto, Calif., around 50 members of the >> Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the Peninsula gathered in a rented room >> above a popular coffee shop. Before the occasion got under way, the >> conversation was a friendly and exuberant mix of the mundane and the >> heady: the gorgeous weather, Christian writer C.S. Lewis, the lusciousness >> of the strawberries set out as a snack, someone’s car trouble, the problem >> of demons. Lead pastor Alex Van Riesen, a tall, informal, open-faced man, >> got everyone settled and quiet. >> >> “For those of you who haven’t been to our church, this is the way it is,” >> Van Riesen began cheerfully. “Everyone hangs outside eating, drinking >> coffee, and talking. Then, when you hear the voice of God, you come >> inside.” >> >> There was a burst of laughter: an evangelical joke for an evangelical >> Christian audience. Van Riesen then segued to the main event. “Have people >> been asking you about the book?” he asked the group. “I’ve been getting >> lots of email about it.” >> >> The book in question, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American >> Evangelical Relationship With God, is about the people in this very room. >> On the makeshift stage next to Van Riesen sat its author, Tanya Luhrmann, >> who spent two years studying this Vineyard church and another two years at >> a Vineyard church in Chicago. She knows these believers well. >> >> Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried, and >> raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home >> prayer groups whose members reported hearing God communicate to them >> directly. She hung out, participated, took notes, recorded interviews, and >> “tried to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical >> world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate.” >> Members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings, and >> getting God’s advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy. >> >> After being introduced jokingly by Van Riesen as Professor Luhrmann to >> people who have known her for so long as Tanya, she told the group her >> book does not weigh in on the actual existence of God. Rather, her >> research focuses on “theory of mind,” how we conceptualize our minds and >> those of others. In this case, she investigated how the practice of prayer >> can train a person to hear what they determine to be God’s voice. >> >> “I do think that if God does speak to someone, God speaks through the >> human mind,” she explained. “As an anthropologist, I feel I can say >> something about the social, cultural, and psychological features of what >> that person is experiencing. I came into this project wanting to >> understand the question: How are rational, sensible, educated people able >> to sustain faith in an invisible being in an environment of skepticism?” >> >> Luhrmann’s provocative theory is that the church teaches those who pray to >> use their minds differently than they do in everyday life. They begin by >> holding conversations with God in their heads, modeled on the kind of >> chummy conversations they’d have with their best friends. As they talk to >> Him, tell Him about their problems, and imagine His wise counsel and >> loving response, they are training their thoughts, much as people use >> weights to train their muscles. The church encourages them to tune in to >> sounds, images, and feelings that are louder or more intense or more >> unfamiliar or more powerful—and to interpret these internal cues as the >> external voice of God. >> >> “I came in with a set of stereotypes of evangelicals—the kind that you’d >> expect from someone in the academy,” she said. “I came out with more >> respect for the religious process...how private and precious the >> experience of God can be for people.” >> >> She read from her book’s final chapter: “I have said that I do not presume >> to know ultimate reality. But it is also true that through the process of >> this journey, in my own way, I have come to know God.” >> >> Luhrmann’s work has roots deep in her intellectual and emotional past. She >> describes herself as an anthropologist with one foot in psychology. She >> could easily add that her other foot is in theology and both hands have a >> firm grasp on philosophy. >> >> Her upbringing was that of a “spiritual mutt.” In the book’s preface and >> acknowledgments, she writes that she has been thinking about God ever >> since her maternal grandfather, a Baptist minister, “walked across the >> park with me when I was 6 and tried to explain who he thought God was.” >> His daughter—Luhrmann’s mother—took her children to the more free-form >> Unitarian church. Luhrmann’s paternal grandfather was a Christian >> Scientist whose son—Luhrmann’s father—became a medical doctor, a >> psychiatrist. The eldest of three children, Tanya was raised in a suburban >> New Jersey neighborhood, where she helped Orthodox Jewish neighbors as a >> shabbas goy, a gentile who assists with activities that are restricted on >> the Sabbath, such as turning on light switches. “I came from this >> background where I knew smart, good people whom I loved, but who came down >> on very different positions on the existence of God—not only on the yes-no >> dimension, but on who God was.” >> >> As a Harvard freshman, she had thoughts about Immanuel Kant that, in many >> ways, set the course of her career. She decided that the philosopher was >> “cheating” when he “explained away” the irrational. “I’ve always been >> intrigued by myths and stories and the way people construct their world. >> People live in the narrative, and that is more important than their >> logical sensibility in many ways. So I switched from philosophy to >> folklore....I was just so curious about people and about the way they come >> to hold their beliefs—even in the face of evidence to the contrary.” >> >> An academic mentor encouraged her to pursue graduate studies at the >> University of Chicago, but a chance encounter with a volume in the Harvard >> bookstore sent her in a different direction. “It was a book that told you >> how to be a witch,” she recalls with a laugh. “I was amazed by this. You >> can learn that?” >> >> She headed to Cambridge University for graduate studies, from whence she >> could go “hang out in London with all these pagans and magicians—for the >> most part educated and middle-class people—and plunge into this really >> batty dissertation on modern witches.” >> >> The goal was not to rule on the validity of magic. Luhrmann was more >> interested in the magical process, in what happened in the minds of the >> practitioners. “I was really taken by my observation that something does >> happen. I didn’t quite know how to think about it, but they experienced >> something directly.” >> >> Luhrmann did “what anthropologists do” and participated in their world by >> joining their groups, reading their books, and performing rituals. For 30 >> minutes a day for nine months, she practiced seeing with her mind’s eye, >> following instructions such as: Build up in imagination a journey from >> your physical plane home to your ideal room. >> >> What startled her was that her witchcraft self-training worked. Her >> internal awareness seemed to shift; her senses felt more alive and alert. >> She had her own supernatural experience: One night, after she’d done some >> pleasurable and immersive reading about the early Celts, six druids >> appeared outside her window and just as suddenly vanished. “Had they been >> there in the flesh? I thought not,” she writes in When God Talks Back, but >> the vivid, singular experience led her to wonder “for many years if >> something about the practice associated with magic made these supernatural >> experiences more common. When I encountered the same spiritual techniques >> in experiential evangelical Christianity, I was determined to find out.” >> >> In 2007, to better understand if and how spiritual practice impacts the >> mind, Luhrmann randomly divided Christian volunteers into groups: One >> listened on iPods for 30 minutes a day to lectures on the Gospels, while >> another participated in a more interactive, imagination-rich way, similar >> to the prayer style of Vineyard members. Their recordings invited them to >> see, hear, and touch God in the mind’s eye, to carry on a dialogue with >> Jesus. >> >> “I found that after a month of prayer practice, people reported more vivid >> mental imagery than those who listened to the lectures,” she says. “They >> used mental imagery more readily and had somewhat better perceptual >> attention, and they reported more unusual sensory experience. In short, >> they attended to their inner experience more seriously, and that altered >> how real that experience became for them.” >> >> The night before Luhrmann appeared at the Vineyard congregation, she read >> and answered questions at a Bay Area bookstore. She traced the modern >> history of the evangelical movement from its hippie, Jesus-freak roots of >> the 1960s to its current, mostly conservative, mostly middle-class state. >> She talked about the people whose stories give the book its narrative >> pull, people whose faith proved more complex than she had imagined. >> >> This was an entirely different crowd. A couple of atheists ranted about >> how people who talk to God must be nuts. Another person in the audience, a >> little more measured, wanted Luhrmann to address the impact that >> conservative evangelicals are having on the country’s political landscape. >> >> It is not a small impact. Of the many baby boomers who once stopped going >> to churches, half have returned to religious practices, but not to the >> mainstream services of their childhood. They have flocked to churches >> similar to the Vineyard. A recent study found that nearly 40 percent of >> Americans said that the main reason they practice religion was “to forge a >> personal relationship with God.” Some call this movement the country’s >> fourth Great Awakening—a reference to other eras in American history in >> which religious fervor shaped the national agenda. >> >> While Luhrmann intentionally avoided politics in the book, it comes up in >> interviews and reviews, as readers and critics wonder if the author “ever >> engaged her subjects in a lively conversation about gay marriage or >> evolution.” Her answer is that conservative evangelicals and secular >> liberals are at such odds politically because they think about life very >> differently. If political progressives really want to stop scratching >> their heads over why evangelicals get so upset about same-sex marriage and >> health-care reform, they need to understand how evangelicals think about >> God. >> >> “Secular liberals want to create the social conditions that allow everyday >> people, behaving the way ordinary people behave, to have fewer bad >> outcomes,” she says. “When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately >> about what kind of person they are trying to become—what humans could and >> should be, rather than who they are. From this perspective, the problem >> with government is that it steps in when people fall short.” >> >> Hanging out with believers—whom she found “smarter and more varied than >> many liberals realize”—has given her some insight that could double as >> political advice. “If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, >> they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear. They >> should talk about the kind of people we are aiming to be and about the >> transformational journey that any choice will take us on.” >> >> Reprinted with permission from Stanford magazine, published by Stanford >> Alumni Association, Stanford University. >> >> >> >> – Sent from The Week iPad edition – >> All You Need To Know About Everything That Matters >> Download the app and try The Week for free: >> http://iTunes.com/apps/theweekmagazineus >> >> >> Jim Wiegel >> Jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com >> >> “One cannot live in the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s >> morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in >> the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become >> a lie.” – Carl Jung >> >> Partners in Participation Upcoming public course opportunities: >> ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 11-12, 2012 >> ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012 >> The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Sept 7, 2012 >> Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation >> program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, >> 2012 >> See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website >> for further details. >> _______________________________________________ >> 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: 2012.0.2197 / Virus Database: 2437/5208 - Release Date: 08/18/12 >> > > _______________________________________________ > OE mailing list > OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net > > > > > > From: "Del Morril" <delhmor(a)wamail.net> > Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] From The Week: Hearing the voice of God > Date: 20 August 2012 00:53:02 BST > To: "'Order Ecumenical Community'" <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Reply-To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > > > Wow & Wow! This comes at a really good time for me, who tends to respond, > when asked "what are you" (religiously, that is), "I guess I'm a Pentecostal > Methodist Hindu". Actually, I probably could add a couple of other things > where one "fills in the blanks" depending upon what day I'm thinking about > how I reconcile a "personal god" over against the realities of life around > this world, and my own personal experiences in the past, many of which can't > be explained from any rational viewpoint. This writer is amazing, coming > from such an interesting perspective, and fresh and open angle. I do thank > you, Jim, for sharing it with us. > Del > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > [mailto:oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of James Wiegel > Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 8:02 AM > To: Colleague Dialogue; Order Ecumenical Community > Subject: [Oe List ...] From The Week: Hearing the voice of God > > Seems quite intriguing. Has anyone read this book? > > Hearing the voice of God > > When an anthropologist studied how evangelicals pray, says Jill Wolfson, she > came to a surprising realization. > > > > > > From: LAURELCG(a)aol.com > Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] From The Week: Hearing the voice of God > Date: 20 August 2012 01:30:33 BST > To: dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net, Oe(a)wedgeblade.net > Reply-To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > > > Thank you, Jim. What a rich report. I'd like to respond with a witness, or sorts. > > After Fred died (1/31/08), I decided to simplify my life by going to church with my mother. It was not easy to return to the fundamentalist Church of Christ that I grew up in, but it was easier than trying to juggle dropping her off, going to the Presbyterian church where I was a member, than picking her up. > > I loved the a cappella singing of gospel hymns, participating in communion weekly and the very sweet people in the congregation. I couldn't stand the theology, but was able to tune out the sermon and either meditate or read scripture during that time. I was listed as a visitor in the bulletin every week for at least 3 years. > > After Mother died in March, a friend and fellow D.Min. from University of Creation Spirituality, came for Mother's memorial service, which was on a Sunday afternoon. Mia, my friend, and I went to worship that morning at the church of Christ. (We were borrowing chairs for the service at Mother's apartment building later.) I was a little apprehensive. Mia grew up in a wealthy Episcopalian family in Philadelphia, had never been to a fundamentalist church. This would be very strange for her. > > After worship, she turned to me, her face glowing and said, "The energy here was so sweet that I had a major breakthrough on an issue I've been struggling with internally." > > That wouldn't have happened if she'd pre-judged it all a "crock" because it wasn't post-modern theology. Open your heart just a little, Wes. Go to your own experience of deep spirituality, not some chart from 40 years ago, if you want to understand why the Vineyard Christian Fellowship and other congregations like it are bursting at the seams. > > My two cents:) > > Grace and peace, > Jann McGuire > > In a message dated 8/19/2012 7:59:49 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com writes: > Seems quite intriguing. Has anyone read this book? > > Hearing the voice of God > > When an anthropologist studied how evangelicals pray, says Jill Wolfson, she came to a surprising realization. > > On a Sunday evening in Palo Alto, Calif., around 50 members of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the Peninsula gathered in a rented room above a popular coffee shop. Before the occasion got under way, the conversation was a friendly and exuberant mix of the mundane and the heady: the gorgeous weather, Christian writer C.S. Lewis, the lusciousness of the strawberries set out as a snack, someone’s car trouble, the problem of demons. Lead pastor Alex Van Riesen, a tall, informal, open-faced man, got everyone settled and quiet. > > “For those of you who haven’t been to our church, this is the way it is,” Van Riesen began cheerfully. “Everyone hangs outside eating, drinking coffee, and talking. Then, when you hear the voice of God, you come inside.” > > There was a burst of laughter: an evangelical joke for an evangelical Christian audience. Van Riesen then segued to the main event. “Have people been asking you about the book?” he asked the group. “I’ve been getting lots of email about it.” > > The book in question, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God, is about the people in this very room. On the makeshift stage next to Van Riesen sat its author, Tanya Luhrmann, who spent two years studying this Vineyard church and another two years at a Vineyard church in Chicago. She knows these believers well. > > Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried, and raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home prayer groups whose members reported hearing God communicate to them directly. She hung out, participated, took notes, recorded interviews, and “tried to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate.” Members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings, and getting God’s advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy. > > After being introduced jokingly by Van Riesen as Professor Luhrmann to people who have known her for so long as Tanya, she told the group her book does not weigh in on the actual existence of God. Rather, her research focuses on “theory of mind,” how we conceptualize our minds and those of others. In this case, she investigated how the practice of prayer can train a person to hear what they determine to be God’s voice. > > “I do think that if God does speak to someone, God speaks through the human mind,” she explained. “As an anthropologist, I feel I can say something about the social, cultural, and psychological features of what that person is experiencing. I came into this project wanting to understand the question: How are rational, sensible, educated people able to sustain faith in an invisible being in an environment of skepticism?” > > Luhrmann’s provocative theory is that the church teaches those who pray to use their minds differently than they do in everyday life. They begin by holding conversations with God in their heads, modeled on the kind of chummy conversations they’d have with their best friends. As they talk to Him, tell Him about their problems, and imagine His wise counsel and loving response, they are training their thoughts, much as people use weights to train their muscles. The church encourages them to tune in to sounds, images, and feelings that are louder or more intense or more unfamiliar or more powerful—and to interpret these internal cues as the external voice of God. > > “I came in with a set of stereotypes of evangelicals—the kind that you’d expect from someone in the academy,” she said. “I came out with more respect for the religious process...how private and precious the experience of God can be for people.” > > She read from her book’s final chapter: “I have said that I do not presume to know ultimate reality. But it is also true that through the process of this journey, in my own way, I have come to know God.” > > Luhrmann’s work has roots deep in her intellectual and emotional past. She describes herself as an anthropologist with one foot in psychology. She could easily add that her other foot is in theology and both hands have a firm grasp on philosophy. > > Her upbringing was that of a “spiritual mutt.” In the book’s preface and acknowledgments, she writes that she has been thinking about God ever since her maternal grandfather, a Baptist minister, “walked across the park with me when I was 6 and tried to explain who he thought God was.” His daughter—Luhrmann’s mother—took her children to the more free-form Unitarian church. Luhrmann’s paternal grandfather was a Christian Scientist whose son—Luhrmann’s father—became a medical doctor, a psychiatrist. The eldest of three children, Tanya was raised in a suburban New Jersey neighborhood, where she helped Orthodox Jewish neighbors as a shabbas goy, a gentile who assists with activities that are restricted on the Sabbath, such as turning on light switches. “I came from this background where I knew smart, good people whom I loved, but who came down on very different positions on the existence of God—not only on the yes-no dimension, but on who God was.” > > As a Harvard freshman, she had thoughts about Immanuel Kant that, in many ways, set the course of her career. She decided that the philosopher was “cheating” when he “explained away” the irrational. “I’ve always been intrigued by myths and stories and the way people construct their world. People live in the narrative, and that is more important than their logical sensibility in many ways. So I switched from philosophy to folklore....I was just so curious about people and about the way they come to hold their beliefs—even in the face of evidence to the contrary.” > > An academic mentor encouraged her to pursue graduate studies at the University of Chicago, but a chance encounter with a volume in the Harvard bookstore sent her in a different direction. “It was a book that told you how to be a witch,” she recalls with a laugh. “I was amazed by this. You can learn that?” > > She headed to Cambridge University for graduate studies, from whence she could go “hang out in London with all these pagans and magicians—for the most part educated and middle-class people—and plunge into this really batty dissertation on modern witches.” > > The goal was not to rule on the validity of magic. Luhrmann was more interested in the magical process, in what happened in the minds of the practitioners. “I was really taken by my observation that something does happen. I didn’t quite know how to think about it, but they experienced something directly.” > > Luhrmann did “what anthropologists do” and participated in their world by joining their groups, reading their books, and performing rituals. For 30 minutes a day for nine months, she practiced seeing with her mind’s eye, following instructions such as: Build up in imagination a journey from your physical plane home to your ideal room. > > What startled her was that her witchcraft self-training worked. Her internal awareness seemed to shift; her senses felt more alive and alert. She had her own supernatural experience: One night, after she’d done some pleasurable and immersive reading about the early Celts, six druids appeared outside her window and just as suddenly vanished. “Had they been there in the flesh? I thought not,” she writes in When God Talks Back, but the vivid, singular experience led her to wonder “for many years if something about the practice associated with magic made these supernatural experiences more common. When I encountered the same spiritual techniques in experiential evangelical Christianity, I was determined to find out.” > > In 2007, to better understand if and how spiritual practice impacts the mind, Luhrmann randomly divided Christian volunteers into groups: One listened on iPods for 30 minutes a day to lectures on the Gospels, while another participated in a more interactive, imagination-rich way, similar to the prayer style of Vineyard members. Their recordings invited them to see, hear, and touch God in the mind’s eye, to carry on a dialogue with Jesus. > > “I found that after a month of prayer practice, people reported more vivid mental imagery than those who listened to the lectures,” she says. “They used mental imagery more readily and had somewhat better perceptual attention, and they reported more unusual sensory experience. In short, they attended to their inner experience more seriously, and that altered how real that experience became for them.” > > The night before Luhrmann appeared at the Vineyard congregation, she read and answered questions at a Bay Area bookstore. She traced the modern history of the evangelical movement from its hippie, Jesus-freak roots of the 1960s to its current, mostly conservative, mostly middle-class state. She talked about the people whose stories give the book its narrative pull, people whose faith proved more complex than she had imagined. > > This was an entirely different crowd. A couple of atheists ranted about how people who talk to God must be nuts. Another person in the audience, a little more measured, wanted Luhrmann to address the impact that conservative evangelicals are having on the country’s political landscape. > > It is not a small impact. Of the many baby boomers who once stopped going to churches, half have returned to religious practices, but not to the mainstream services of their childhood. They have flocked to churches similar to the Vineyard. A recent study found that nearly 40 percent of Americans said that the main reason they practice religion was “to forge a personal relationship with God.” Some call this movement the country’s fourth Great Awakening—a reference to other eras in American history in which religious fervor shaped the national agenda. > > While Luhrmann intentionally avoided politics in the book, it comes up in interviews and reviews, as readers and critics wonder if the author “ever engaged her subjects in a lively conversation about gay marriage or evolution.” Her answer is that conservative evangelicals and secular liberals are at such odds politically because they think about life very differently. If political progressives really want to stop scratching their heads over why evangelicals get so upset about same-sex marriage and health-care reform, they need to understand how evangelicals think about God. > > “Secular liberals want to create the social conditions that allow everyday people, behaving the way ordinary people behave, to have fewer bad outcomes,” she says. “When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately about what kind of person they are trying to become—what humans could and should be, rather than who they are. From this perspective, the problem with government is that it steps in when people fall short.” > > Hanging out with believers—whom she found “smarter and more varied than many liberals realize”—has given her some insight that could double as political advice. “If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear. They should talk about the kind of people we are aiming to be and about the transformational journey that any choice will take us on.” > > Reprinted with permission from Stanford magazine, published by Stanford Alumni Association, Stanford University. > > > > – Sent from The Week iPad edition – > All You Need To Know About Everything That Matters > Download the app and try The Week for free: http://iTunes.com/apps/theweekmagazineus > > > Jim Wiegel > Jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com > > “One cannot live in the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” – Carl Jung > > Partners in Participation Upcoming public course opportunities: > ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 11-12, 2012 > ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012 > The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Sept 7, 2012 > Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, 2012 > See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website for further details. > _______________________________________________ > Dialogue mailing list > Dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net > > > > From: Jaime R Vergara <svesjaime(a)aol.com> > Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God > Date: 20 August 2012 07:25:24 BST > To: oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > Reply-To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > > > Anthropologist, my foot. Looks more to me like a voyeur justifying a research paper. > > David, one does not need to be in RS-I grad to understand life as it comes. I knew my uniqueness (received in the bosom of Abraham) because a gynecologist bothered to explain to me that out of 200 million sperms from my father to my mother, only one made it inside the ovum to join in the conception process. One out of 200 million chances beat any casino odds on the impossible side. > > Not only that, the ovum did not have to allow the first sperm that reached its wall entry. It "chose" one out of possible 50k that made the journey. Now, that is an incredible act of freedom. I do not know what the criteria was, but I was at once my freedom and chosen-ness. Sounds like the reality that the metaphor of holy spirit is pointing to? > > Together, ovum and sperm, cooperatively and collaboratively, created a bone and muscle structure, a digestive and respiratory system, and other complex processes, not the least of which, is the neural system that is way beyond anything US-Japan-German technology can put together. That took nine months. Who said I was not creative? Sounds to me like the consciousness of those who understood themselves to be Team Ecclesia, in the manner of the κριστοσ, before we started singing the glories to JC Superstar. > > Bill's point is about the reality in life that the word and practice of 'prayer' illuminates. Unless the evangelical group in prayer refers to "speaking to God" as "speaking to the way life is, YHWH," then we really do not care if the group happens to care for each other, build a community, and serve the world. Even Aryans with swastikas can do that! > > My point is, I knew this before I heard of RS-I. > > No offense to Tanya Luhrman, but as delightfully light-hearted curmudgeon Bill phrases it, the treatment of this subject is a crock. > > j'aime la vie > aka, The Reverend Jaime R. Vergara, MTh, self-defrocked, > in China > > > -----Original Message----- > From: David Walters <walters(a)alaweb.com> > To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Sent: Mon, Aug 20, 2012 5:09 am > Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God > > Hold on there Rev. William Salmon. This article is about reflections of a > anthropologist on her encounters with people of varied religious experiences. > Non one in these groups nor the author ever had the experience of RS-1 or any of > its kin. Nobody has told them that there is no three story universe or walked > them thru the Tillich paper. > > Tanya Luhrmann has attempted to document the experiences and practices of a > faith community in California called the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the > Peninsula. They may not worship pray like folks in your Methodist congregation > in Salinas or what we used to do so early in morning in the Great Hall at > Chicago: Centrum. One thing for sure, this CA congregation is definitely not > your father's church. Nor is anything like Martin Luther or John Calvin's > congregation. > > The real question that needs to be asked is what can we learn from Tanya > Luhrmann's book relative to how we can create new intentional communities that > understand that life is good received, approved and open to the future. > -David Walters > > --- wsalmon(a)cox.net wrote: > Jim and others-- > On prayer, eh? > >From a perspective of Postmodern theologians, the treatment of this > topic is a crock. It is another attempt, among billions of evangelical > pseudo-scientific attempts, to explain the theological. It can't be done. So > much for the death throes of the Modern Worldview. > The best answer ever (so far) is located in the chart of the 144's; > Prayer is "THE DOING." It is experienced as: "The Burden," The Passion," > "The Intervention," and "The Expenditure." When we live The Awakened Life" > we discover we ARE PRAYER that is demonstrated in the DOING. > The existential question is, what kind of prayer are we? > Ah, well. Pissing into the winds of the past only gets our pants wet. > Everything lies in the future where the Good News is experienced: ALL IS > GOOD, the PRESENT is a gift, the PAST is fogiven/forgotten, and the FUTURE > IS OPEN. This, my friends, is prayer. > Later! > Bill > PS: Geez. I wonder if this isn't hearing the voice of God? Well, I'll be > damned. wes > ----- Original Message ----- > > >From The Week: Hearing the voice of God > > Seems quite intriguing. Has anyone read this book? > > Hearing the voice of God > > When an anthropologist studied how evangelicals pray, says Jill Wolfson, > > she came to a surprising realization. > > > > On a Sunday evening in Palo Alto, Calif., around 50 members of the > > Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the Peninsula gathered in a rented room > > above a popular coffee shop. Before the occasion got under way, the > > conversation was a friendly and exuberant mix of the mundane and the > > heady: the gorgeous weather, Christian writer C.S. Lewis, the lusciousness > > of the strawberries set out as a snack, someone’s car trouble, the problem > > of demons. Lead pastor Alex Van Riesen, a tall, informal, open-faced man, > > got everyone settled and quiet. > > > > “For those of you who haven’t been to our church, this is the way it is,” > > Van Riesen began cheerfully. “Everyone hangs outside eating, drinking > > coffee, and talking. Then, when you hear the voice of God, you come > > inside.” > > > > There was a burst of laughter: an evangelical joke for an evangelical > > Christian audience. Van Riesen then segued to the main event. “Have people > > been asking you about the book?” he asked the group. “I’ve been getting > > lots of email about it.” > > > > The book in question, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American > > Evangelical Relationship With God, is about the people in this very room. > > On the makeshift stage next to Van Riesen sat its author, Tanya Luhrmann, > > who spent two years studying this Vineyard church and another two years at > > a Vineyard church in Chicago. She knows these believers well. > > > > Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried, and > > raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home > > prayer groups whose members reported hearing God communicate to them > > directly. She hung out, participated, took notes, recorded interviews, and > > “tried to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical > > world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate.” > > Members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings, and > > getting God’s advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy. > > > > After being introduced jokingly by Van Riesen as Professor Luhrmann to > > people who have known her for so long as Tanya, she told the group her > > book does not weigh in on the actual existence of God. Rather, her > > research focuses on “theory of mind,” how we conceptualize our minds and > > those of others. In this case, she investigated how the practice of prayer > > can train a person to hear what they determine to be God’s voice. > > > > “I do think that if God does speak to someone, God speaks through the > > human mind,” she explained. “As an anthropologist, I feel I can say > > something about the social, cultural, and psychological features of what > > that person is experiencing. I came into this project wanting to > > understand the question: How are rational, sensible, educated people able > > to sustain faith in an invisible being in an environment of skepticism?” > > > > Luhrmann’s provocative theory is that the church teaches those who pray to > > use their minds differently than they do in everyday life. They begin by > > holding conversations with God in their heads, modeled on the kind of > > chummy conversations they’d have with their best friends. As they talk to > > Him, tell Him about their problems, and imagine His wise counsel and > > loving response, they are training their thoughts, much as people use > > weights to train their muscles. The church encourages them to tune in to > > sounds, images, and feelings that are louder or more intense or more > > unfamiliar or more powerful—and to interpret these internal cues as the > > external voice of God. > > > > “I came in with a set of stereotypes of evangelicals—the kind that you’d > > expect from someone in the academy,” she said. “I came out with more > > respect for the religious process...how private and precious the > > experience of God can be for people.” > > > > She read from her book’s final chapter: “I have said that I do not presume > > to know ultimate reality. But it is also true that through the process of > > this journey, in my own way, I have come to know God.” > > > > Luhrmann’s work has roots deep in her intellectual and emotional past. She > > describes herself as an anthropologist with one foot in psychology. She > > could easily add that her other foot is in theology and both hands have a > > firm grasp on philosophy. > > > > Her upbringing was that of a “spiritual mutt.” In the book’s preface and > > acknowledgments, she writes that she has been thinking about God ever > > since her maternal grandfather, a Baptist minister, “walked across the > > park with me when I was 6 and tried to explain who he thought God was.” > > His daughter—Luhrmann’s mother—took her children to the more free-form > > Unitarian church. Luhrmann’s paternal grandfather was a Christian > > Scientist whose son—Luhrmann’s father—became a medical doctor, a > > psychiatrist. The eldest of three children, Tanya was raised in a suburban > > New Jersey neighborhood, where she helped Orthodox Jewish neighbors as a > > shabbas goy, a gentile who assists with activities that are restricted on > > the Sabbath, such as turning on light switches. “I came from this > > background where I knew smart, good people whom I loved, but who came down > > on very different positions on the existence of God—not only on the yes-no > > dimension, but on who God was.” > > > > As a Harvard freshman, she had thoughts about Immanuel Kant that, in many > > ways, set the course of her career. She decided that the philosopher was > > “cheating” when he “explained away” the irrational. “I’ve always been > > intrigued by myths and stories and the way people construct their world. > > People live in the narrative, and that is more important than their > > logical sensibility in many ways. So I switched from philosophy to > > folklore....I was just so curious about people and about the way they come > > to hold their beliefs—even in the face of evidence to the contrary.” > > > > An academic mentor encouraged her to pursue graduate studies at the > > University of Chicago, but a chance encounter with a volume in the Harvard > > bookstore sent her in a different direction. “It was a book that told you > > how to be a witch,” she recalls with a laugh. “I was amazed by this. You > > can learn that?” > > > > She headed to Cambridge University for graduate studies, from whence she > > could go “hang out in London with all these pagans and magicians—for the > > most part educated and middle-class people—and plunge into this really > > batty dissertation on modern witches.” > > > > The goal was not to rule on the validity of magic. Luhrmann was more > > interested in the magical process, in what happened in the minds of the > > practitioners. “I was really taken by my observation that something does > > happen. I didn’t quite know how to think about it, but they experienced > > something directly.” > > > > Luhrmann did “what anthropologists do” and participated in their world by > > joining their groups, reading their books, and performing rituals. For 30 > > minutes a day for nine months, she practiced seeing with her mind’s eye, > > following instructions such as: Build up in imagination a journey from > > your physical plane home to your ideal room. > > > > What startled her was that her witchcraft self-training worked. Her > > internal awareness seemed to shift; her senses felt more alive and alert. > > She had her own supernatural experience: One night, after she’d done some > > pleasurable and immersive reading about the early Celts, six druids > > appeared outside her window and just as suddenly vanished. “Had they been > > there in the flesh? I thought not,” she writes in When God Talks Back, but > > the vivid, singular experience led her to wonder “for many years if > > something about the practice associated with magic made these supernatural > > experiences more common. When I encountered the same spiritual techniques > > in experiential evangelical Christianity, I was determined to find out.” > > > > In 2007, to better understand if and how spiritual practice impacts the > > mind, Luhrmann randomly divided Christian volunteers into groups: One > > listened on iPods for 30 minutes a day to lectures on the Gospels, while > > another participated in a more interactive, imagination-rich way, similar > > to the prayer style of Vineyard members. Their recordings invited them to > > see, hear, and touch God in the mind’s eye, to carry on a dialogue with > > Jesus. > > > > “I found that after a month of prayer practice, people reported more vivid > > mental imagery than those who listened to the lectures,” she says. “They > > used mental imagery more readily and had somewhat better perceptual > > attention, and they reported more unusual sensory experience. In short, > > they attended to their inner experience more seriously, and that altered > > how real that experience became for them.” > > > > The night before Luhrmann appeared at the Vineyard congregation, she read > > and answered questions at a Bay Area bookstore. She traced the modern > > history of the evangelical movement from its hippie, Jesus-freak roots of > > the 1960s to its current, mostly conservative, mostly middle-class state. > > She talked about the people whose stories give the book its narrative > > pull, people whose faith proved more complex than she had imagined. > > > > This was an entirely different crowd. A couple of atheists ranted about > > how people who talk to God must be nuts. Another person in the audience, a > > little more measured, wanted Luhrmann to address the impact that > > conservative evangelicals are having on the country’s political landscape. > > > > It is not a small impact. Of the many baby boomers who once stopped going > > to churches, half have returned to religious practices, but not to the > > mainstream services of their childhood. They have flocked to churches > > similar to the Vineyard. A recent study found that nearly 40 percent of > > Americans said that the main reason they practice religion was “to forge a > > personal relationship with God.” Some call this movement the country’s > > fourth Great Awakening—a reference to other eras in American history in > > which religious fervor shaped the national agenda. > > > > While Luhrmann intentionally avoided politics in the book, it comes up in > > interviews and reviews, as readers and critics wonder if the author “ever > > engaged her subjects in a lively conversation about gay marriage or > > evolution.” Her answer is that conservative evangelicals and secular > > liberals are at such odds politically because they think about life very > > differently. If political progressives really want to stop scratching > > their heads over why evangelicals get so upset about same-sex marriage and > > health-care reform, they need to understand how evangelicals think about > > God. > > > > “Secular liberals want to create the social conditions that allow everyday > > people, behaving the way ordinary people behave, to have fewer bad > > outcomes,” she says. “When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately > > about what kind of person they are trying to become—what humans could and > > should be, rather than who they are. From this perspective, the problem > > with government is that it steps in when people fall short.” > > > > Hanging out with believers—whom she found “smarter and more varied than > > many liberals realize”—has given her some insight that could double as > > political advice. “If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, > > they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear. They > > should talk about the kind of people we are aiming to be and about the > > transformational journey that any choice will take us on.” > > > > Reprinted with permission from Stanford magazine, published by Stanford > > Alumni Association, Stanford University. > > > > > > > > – Sent from The Week iPad edition – > > All You Need To Know About Everything That Matters > > Download the app and try The Week for free: > > http://iTunes.com/apps/theweekmagazineus > > > > > > Jim Wiegel > > Jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com > > > > “One cannot live in the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s > > morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in > > the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become > > a lie.” – Carl Jung > > > > Partners in Participation Upcoming public course opportunities: > > ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 11-12, 2012 > > ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012 > > The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Sept 7, 2012 > > Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation > > program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, > > 2012 > > See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website > > for further details. > > _______________________________________________ > > 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: 2012.0.2197 / Virus Database: 2437/5208 - Release Date: 08/18/12 > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 > > > > > From: Jim Baumbach <wtw0bl(a)new.rr.com> > Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God > Date: 20 August 2012 12:59:17 BST > To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > Reply-To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> > > > Oh Jaime, there is something we should clarify about the probability of your being you! You were in everyone of those 200 million sperm that reached that one egg. You may have been a girl depending on which part of you got there but you would have been you nevertheless. Now if there was more than one egg being impregnated then those others might look and act like you much as twins do but you would be in two different places. So you were you unless your daddy was someone else or your mommy was... > > We like to talk about winning the lottery by being "chosen" but that probability was "1" that you would be here no matter which one of those wiggly things migrated from here to there. > > As to hearing the voice of god--I worry that whoever hears it may be up to radical activities. The Manson Family, People's Temple (Jim Jones), Father Divine (who actually claimed to be God), as well as some of the recent mass murders that have occurred all claimed to have heard the voice of God. I'm sure that not everybody who claims to hear the voice of God is cruel and unusual but I wouldn't bet the farm on it! > > Jim Baumbach > > On 8/20/2012 1:25 AM, Jaime R Vergara wrote: >> Anthropologist, my foot. Looks more to me like a voyeur justifying a research paper. >> >> David, one does not need to be in RS-I grad to understand life as it comes. I knew my uniqueness (received in the bosom of Abraham) because a gynecologist bothered to explain to me that out of 200 million sperms from my father to my mother, only one made it inside the ovum to join in the conception process. One out of 200 million chances beat any casino odds on the impossible side. >> >> Not only that, the ovum did not have to allow the first sperm that reached its wall entry. It "chose" one out of possible 50k that made the journey. Now, that is an incredible act of freedom. I do not know what the criteria was, but I was at once my freedom and chosen-ness. Sounds like the reality that the metaphor of holy spirit is pointing to? >> >> Together, ovum and sperm, cooperatively and collaboratively, created a bone and muscle structure, a digestive and respiratory system, and other complex processes, not the least of which, is the neural system that is way beyond anything US-Japan-German technology can put together. That took nine months. Who said I was not creative? Sounds to me like the consciousness of those who understood themselves to be Team Ecclesia, in the manner of the κριστοσ, before we started singing the glories to JC Superstar. >> >> Bill's point is about the reality in life that the word and practice of 'prayer' illuminates. Unless the evangelical group in prayer refers to "speaking to God" as "speaking to the way life is, YHWH," then we really do not care if the group happens to care for each other, build a community, and serve the world. Even Aryans with swastikas can do that! >> >> My point is, I knew this before I heard of RS-I. >> >> No offense to Tanya Luhrman, but as delightfully light-hearted curmudgeon Bill phrases it, the treatment of this subject is a crock. >> >> j'aime la vie >> aka, The Reverend Jaime R. Vergara, MTh, self-defrocked, >> in China >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: David Walters <walters(a)alaweb.com> >> To: Order Ecumenical Community <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> >> Sent: Mon, Aug 20, 2012 5:09 am >> Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Salmon: Reflection on Hearing the voice of God >> >> Hold on there Rev. William Salmon. This article is about reflections of a >> anthropologist on her encounters with people of varied religious experiences. >> Non one in these groups nor the author ever had the experience of RS-1 or any of >> its kin. Nobody has told them that there is no three story universe or walked >> them thru the Tillich paper. >> >> Tanya Luhrmann has attempted to document the experiences and practices of a >> faith community in California called the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the >> Peninsula. They may not worship pray like folks in your Methodist congregation >> in Salinas or what we used to do so early in morning in the Great Hall at >> Chicago: Centrum. One thing for sure, this CA congregation is definitely not >> your father's church. Nor is anything like Martin Luther or John Calvin's >> congregation. >> >> The real question that needs to be asked is what can we learn from Tanya >> Luhrmann's book relative to how we can create new intentional communities that >> understand that life is good received, approved and open to the future. >> -David Walters >> >> --- wsalmon(a)cox.net wrote: >> Jim and others-- >> On prayer, eh? >> >From a perspective of Postmodern theologians, the treatment of this >> topic is a crock. It is another attempt, among billions of evangelical >> pseudo-scientific attempts, to explain the theological. It can't be done. So >> much for the death throes of the Modern Worldview. >> The best answer ever (so far) is located in the chart of the 144's; >> Prayer is "THE DOING." It is experienced as: "The Burden," The Passion," >> "The Intervention," and "The Expenditure." When we live The Awakened Life" >> we discover we ARE PRAYER that is demonstrated in the DOING. >> The existential question is, what kind of prayer are we? >> Ah, well. Pissing into the winds of the past only gets our pants wet. >> Everything lies in the future where the Good News is experienced: ALL IS >> GOOD, the PRESENT is a gift, the PAST is fogiven/forgotten, and the FUTURE >> IS OPEN. This, my friends, is prayer. >> Later! >> Bill >> PS: Geez. I wonder if this isn't hearing the voice of God? Well, I'll be >> damned. wes >> ----- Original Message ----- >> >> >From The Week: Hearing the voice of God >> > Seems quite intriguing. Has anyone read this book? >> > Hearing the voice of God >> > When an anthropologist studied how evangelicals pray, says Jill Wolfson, >> > she came to a surprising realization. >> > >> > On a Sunday evening in Palo Alto, Calif., around 50 members of the >> > Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the Peninsula gathered in a rented room >> > above a popular coffee shop. Before the occasion got under way, the >> > conversation was a friendly and exuberant mix of the mundane and the >> > heady: the gorgeous weather, Christian writer C.S. Lewis, the lusciousness >> > of the strawberries set out as a snack, someone’s car trouble, the problem >> > of demons. Lead pastor Alex Van Riesen, a tall, informal, open-faced man, >> > got everyone settled and quiet. >> > >> > “For those of you who haven’t been to our church, this is the way it is,” >> > Van Riesen began cheerfully. “Everyone hangs outside eating, drinking >> > coffee, and talking. Then, when you hear the voice of God, you come >> > inside.” >> > >> > There was a burst of laughter: an evangelical joke for an evangelical >> > Christian audience. Van Riesen then segued to the main event. “Have people >> > been asking you about the book?” he asked the group. “I’ve been getting >> > lots of email about it.” >> > >> > The book in question, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American >> > Evangelical Relationship With God, is about the people in this very room. >> > On the makeshift stage next to Van Riesen sat its author, Tanya Luhrmann, >> > who spent two years studying this Vineyard church and another two years at >> > a Vineyard church in Chicago. She knows these believers well. >> > >> > Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried, and >> > raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home >> > prayer groups whose members reported hearing God communicate to them >> > directly. She hung out, participated, took notes, recorded interviews, and >> > “tried to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical >> > world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate.” >> > Members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings, and >> > getting God’s advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy. >> > >> > After being introduced jokingly by Van Riesen as Professor Luhrmann to >> > people who have known her for so long as Tanya, she told the group her >> > book does not weigh in on the actual existence of God. Rather, her >> > research focuses on “theory of mind,” how we conceptualize our minds and >> > those of others. In this case, she investigated how the practice of prayer >> > can train a person to hear what they determine to be God’s voice. >> > >> > “I do think that if God does speak to someone, God speaks through the >> > human mind,” she explained. “As an anthropologist, I feel I can say >> > something about the social, cultural, and psychological features of what >> > that person is experiencing. I came into this project wanting to >> > understand the question: How are rational, sensible, educated people able >> > to sustain faith in an invisible being in an environment of skepticism?” >> > >> > Luhrmann’s provocative theory is that the church teaches those who pray to >> > use their minds differently than they do in everyday life. They begin by >> > holding conversations with God in their heads, modeled on the kind of >> > chummy conversations they’d have with their best friends. As they talk to >> > Him, tell Him about their problems, and imagine His wise counsel and >> > loving response, they are training their thoughts, much as people use >> > weights to train their muscles. The church encourages them to tune in to >> > sounds, images, and feelings that are louder or more intense or more >> > unfamiliar or more powerful—and to interpret these internal cues as the >> > external voice of God. >> > >> > “I came in with a set of stereotypes of evangelicals—the kind that you’d >> > expect from someone in the academy,” she said. “I came out with more >> > respect for the religious process...how private and precious the >> > experience of God can be for people.” >> > >> > She read from her book’s final chapter: “I have said that I do not presume >> > to know ultimate reality. But it is also true that through the process of >> > this journey, in my own way, I have come to know God.” >> > >> > Luhrmann’s work has roots deep in her intellectual and emotional past. She >> > describes herself as an anthropologist with one foot in psychology. She >> > could easily add that her other foot is in theology and both hands have a >> > firm grasp on philosophy. >> > >> > Her upbringing was that of a “spiritual mutt.” In the book’s preface and >> > acknowledgments, she writes that she has been thinking about God ever >> > since her maternal grandfather, a Baptist minister, “walked across the >> > park with me when I was 6 and tried to explain who he thought God was.” >> > His daughter—Luhrmann’s mother—took her children to the more free-form >> > Unitarian church. Luhrmann’s paternal grandfather was a Christian >> > Scientist whose son—Luhrmann’s father—became a medical doctor, a >> > psychiatrist. The eldest of three children, Tanya was raised in a suburban >> > New Jersey neighborhood, where she helped Orthodox Jewish neighbors as a >> > shabbas goy, a gentile who assists with activities that are restricted on >> > the Sabbath, such as turning on light switches. “I came from this >> > background where I knew smart, good people whom I loved, but who came down >> > on very different positions on the existence of God—not only on the yes-no >> > dimension, but on who God was.” >> > >> > As a Harvard freshman, she had thoughts about Immanuel Kant that, in many >> > ways, set the course of her career. She decided that the philosopher was >> > “cheating” when he “explained away” the irrational. “I’ve always been >> > intrigued by myths and stories and the way people construct their world. >> > People live in the narrative, and that is more important than their >> > logical sensibility in many ways. So I switched from philosophy to >> > folklore....I was just so curious about people and about the way they come >> > to hold their beliefs—even in the face of evidence to the contrary.” >> > >> > An academic mentor encouraged her to pursue graduate studies at the >> > University of Chicago, but a chance encounter with a volume in the Harvard >> > bookstore sent her in a different direction. “It was a book that told you >> > how to be a witch,” she recalls with a laugh. “I was amazed by this. You >> > can learn that?” >> > >> > She headed to Cambridge University for graduate studies, from whence she >> > could go “hang out in London with all these pagans and magicians—for the >> > most part educated and middle-class people—and plunge into this really >> > batty dissertation on modern witches.” >> > >> > The goal was not to rule on the validity of magic. Luhrmann was more >> > interested in the magical process, in what happened in the minds of the >> > practitioners. “I was really taken by my observation that something does >> > happen. I didn’t quite know how to think about it, but they experienced >> > something directly.” >> > >> > Luhrmann did “what anthropologists do” and participated in their world by >> > joining their groups, reading their books, and performing rituals. For 30 >> > minutes a day for nine months, she practiced seeing with her mind’s eye, >> > following instructions such as: Build up in imagination a journey from >> > your physical plane home to your ideal room. >> > >> > What startled her was that her witchcraft self-training worked. Her >> > internal awareness seemed to shift; her senses felt more alive and alert. >> > She had her own supernatural experience: One night, after she’d done some >> > pleasurable and immersive reading about the early Celts, six druids >> > appeared outside her window and just as suddenly vanished. “Had they been >> > there in the flesh? I thought not,” she writes in When God Talks Back, but >> > the vivid, singular experience led her to wonder “for many years if >> > something about the practice associated with magic made these supernatural >> > experiences more common. When I encountered the same spiritual techniques >> > in experiential evangelical Christianity, I was determined to find out.” >> > >> > In 2007, to better understand if and how spiritual practice impacts the >> > mind, Luhrmann randomly divided Christian volunteers into groups: One >> > listened on iPods for 30 minutes a day to lectures on the Gospels, while >> > another participated in a more interactive, imagination-rich way, similar >> > to the prayer style of Vineyard members. Their recordings invited them to >> > see, hear, and touch God in the mind’s eye, to carry on a dialogue with >> > Jesus. >> > >> > “I found that after a month of prayer practice, people reported more vivid >> > mental imagery than those who listened to the lectures,” she says. “They >> > used mental imagery more readily and had somewhat better perceptual >> > attention, and they reported more unusual sensory experience. In short, >> > they attended to their inner experience more seriously, and that altered >> > how real that experience became for them.” >> > >> > The night before Luhrmann appeared at the Vineyard congregation, she read >> > and answered questions at a Bay Area bookstore. She traced the modern >> > history of the evangelical movement from its hippie, Jesus-freak roots of >> > the 1960s to its current, mostly conservative, mostly middle-class state. >> > She talked about the people whose stories give the book its narrative >> > pull, people whose faith proved more complex than she had imagined. >> > >> > This was an entirely different crowd. A couple of atheists ranted about >> > how people who talk to God must be nuts. Another person in the audience, a >> > little more measured, wanted Luhrmann to address the impact that >> > conservative evangelicals are having on the country’s political landscape. >> > >> > It is not a small impact. Of the many baby boomers who once stopped going >> > to churches, half have returned to religious practices, but not to the >> > mainstream services of their childhood. They have flocked to churches >> > similar to the Vineyard. A recent study found that nearly 40 percent of >> > Americans said that the main reason they practice religion was “to forge a >> > personal relationship with God.” Some call this movement the country’s >> > fourth Great Awakening—a reference to other eras in American history in >> > which religious fervor shaped the national agenda. >> > >> > While Luhrmann intentionally avoided politics in the book, it comes up in >> > interviews and reviews, as readers and critics wonder if the author “ever >> > engaged her subjects in a lively conversation about gay marriage or >> > evolution.” Her answer is that conservative evangelicals and secular >> > liberals are at such odds politically because they think about life very >> > differently. If political progressives really want to stop scratching >> > their heads over why evangelicals get so upset about same-sex marriage and >> > health-care reform, they need to understand how evangelicals think about >> > God. >> > >> > “Secular liberals want to create the social conditions that allow everyday >> > people, behaving the way ordinary people behave, to have fewer bad >> > outcomes,” she says. “When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately >> > about what kind of person they are trying to become—what humans could and >> > should be, rather than who they are. From this perspective, the problem >> > with government is that it steps in when people fall short.” >> > >> > Hanging out with believers—whom she found “smarter and more varied than >> > many liberals realize”—has given her some insight that could double as >> > political advice. “If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, >> > they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear. They >> > should talk about the kind of people we are aiming to be and about the >> > transformational journey that any choice will take us on.” >> > >> > Reprinted with permission from Stanford magazine, published by Stanford >> > Alumni Association, Stanford University. >> > >> > >> > >> > – Sent from The Week iPad edition – >> > All You Need To Know About Everything That Matters >> > Download the app and try The Week for free: >> > http://iTunes.com/apps/theweekmagazineus >> > >> > >> > Jim Wiegel >> > Jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com >> > >> > “One cannot live in the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s >> > morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in >> > the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become >> > a lie.” – Carl Jung >> > >> > Partners in Participation Upcoming public course opportunities: >> > ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 11-12, 2012 >> > ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012 >> > The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Sept 7, 2012 >> > Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation >> > program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, >> > 2012 >> > See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website >> > for further details. >> > _______________________________________________ >> > 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: 2012.0.2197 / Virus Database: 2437/5208 - Release Date: 08/18/12 >> > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> OE mailing list >> OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net >> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net > > > > _______________________________________________ > OE mailing list > OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net > http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net

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Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] From The Week: Hearing the voice of God
by LAURELCG＠aol.com 19 Aug '12

19 Aug '12

Thank you, Jim. What a rich report. I'd like to respond with a witness, or sorts. After Fred died (1/31/08), I decided to simplify my life by going to church with my mother. It was not easy to return to the fundamentalist Church of Christ that I grew up in, but it was easier than trying to juggle dropping her off, going to the Presbyterian church where I was a member, than picking her up. I loved the a cappella singing of gospel hymns, participating in communion weekly and the very sweet people in the congregation. I couldn't stand the theology, but was able to tune out the sermon and either meditate or read scripture during that time. I was listed as a visitor in the bulletin every week for at least 3 years. After Mother died in March, a friend and fellow D.Min. from University of Creation Spirituality, came for Mother's memorial service, which was on a Sunday afternoon. Mia, my friend, and I went to worship that morning at the church of Christ. (We were borrowing chairs for the service at Mother's apartment building later.) I was a little apprehensive. Mia grew up in a wealthy Episcopalian family in Philadelphia, had never been to a fundamentalist church. This would be very strange for her. After worship, she turned to me, her face glowing and said, "The energy here was so sweet that I had a major breakthrough on an issue I've been struggling with internally." That wouldn't have happened if she'd pre-judged it all a "crock" because it wasn't post-modern theology. Open your heart just a little, Wes. Go to your own experience of deep spirituality, not some chart from 40 years ago, if you want to understand why the Vineyard Christian Fellowship and other congregations like it are bursting at the seams. My two cents:) Grace and peace, Jann McGuire In a message dated 8/19/2012 7:59:49 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com writes: Seems quite intriguing. Has anyone read this book? Hearing the voice of God When an anthropologist studied how evangelicals pray, says Jill Wolfson, she came to a surprising realization. On a Sunday evening in Palo Alto, Calif., around 50 members of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the Peninsula gathered in a rented room above a popular coffee shop. Before the occasion got under way, the conversation was a friendly and exuberant mix of the mundane and the heady: the gorgeous weather, Christian writer C.S. Lewis, the lusciousness of the strawberries set out as a snack, someone’s car trouble, the problem of demons. Lead pastor Alex Van Riesen, a tall, informal, open-faced man, got everyone settled and quiet. “For those of you who haven’t been to our church, this is the way it is,” Van Riesen began cheerfully. “Everyone hangs outside eating, drinking coffee, and talking. Then, when you hear the voice of God, you come inside.” There was a burst of laughter: an evangelical joke for an evangelical Christian audience. Van Riesen then segued to the main event. “Have people been asking you about the book?” he asked the group. “I’ve been getting lots of email about it.” The book in question, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God, is about the people in this very room. On the makeshift stage next to Van Riesen sat its author, Tanya Luhrmann, who spent two years studying this Vineyard church and another two years at a Vineyard church in Chicago. She knows these believers well. Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried, and raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home prayer groups whose members reported hearing God communicate to them directly. She hung out, participated, took notes, recorded interviews, and “tried to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate.” Members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings, and getting God’s advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy. After being introduced jokingly by Van Riesen as Professor Luhrmann to people who have known her for so long as Tanya, she told the group her book does not weigh in on the actual existence of God. Rather, her research focuses on “theory of mind,” how we conceptualize our minds and those of others. In this case, she investigated how the practice of prayer can train a person to hear what they determine to be God’s voice. “I do think that if God does speak to someone, God speaks through the human mind,” she explained. “As an anthropologist, I feel I can say something about the social, cultural, and psychological features of what that person is experiencing. I came into this project wanting to understand the question: How are rational, sensible, educated people able to sustain faith in an invisible being in an environment of skepticism?” Luhrmann’s provocative theory is that the church teaches those who pray to use their minds differently than they do in everyday life. They begin by holding conversations with God in their heads, modeled on the kind of chummy conversations they’d have with their best friends. As they talk to Him, tell Him about their problems, and imagine His wise counsel and loving response, they are training their thoughts, much as people use weights to train their muscles. The church encourages them to tune in to sounds, images, and feelings that are louder or more intense or more unfamiliar or more powerful —and to interpret these internal cues as the external voice of God. “I came in with a set of stereotypes of evangelicals—the kind that you’d expect from someone in the academy,” she said. “I came out with more respect for the religious process...how private and precious the experience of God can be for people.” She read from her book’s final chapter: “I have said that I do not presume to know ultimate reality. But it is also true that through the process of this journey, in my own way, I have come to know God.” Luhrmann’s work has roots deep in her intellectual and emotional past. She describes herself as an anthropologist with one foot in psychology. She could easily add that her other foot is in theology and both hands have a firm grasp on philosophy. Her upbringing was that of a “spiritual mutt.” In the book’s preface and acknowledgments, she writes that she has been thinking about God ever since her maternal grandfather, a Baptist minister, “walked across the park with me when I was 6 and tried to explain who he thought God was.” His daughter— Luhrmann’s mother—took her children to the more free-form Unitarian church. Luhrmann’s paternal grandfather was a Christian Scientist whose son— Luhrmann’s father—became a medical doctor, a psychiatrist. The eldest of three children, Tanya was raised in a suburban New Jersey neighborhood, where she helped Orthodox Jewish neighbors as a shabbas goy, a gentile who assists with activities that are restricted on the Sabbath, such as turning on light switches. “I came from this background where I knew smart, good people whom I loved, but who came down on very different positions on the existence of God—not only on the yes-no dimension, but on who God was.” As a Harvard freshman, she had thoughts about Immanuel Kant that, in many ways, set the course of her career. She decided that the philosopher was “ cheating” when he “explained away” the irrational. “I’ve always been intrigued by myths and stories and the way people construct their world. People live in the narrative, and that is more important than their logical sensibility in many ways. So I switched from philosophy to folklore....I was just so curious about people and about the way they come to hold their beliefs— even in the face of evidence to the contrary.” An academic mentor encouraged her to pursue graduate studies at the University of Chicago, but a chance encounter with a volume in the Harvard bookstore sent her in a different direction. “It was a book that told you how to be a witch,” she recalls with a laugh. “I was amazed by this. You can learn that?” She headed to Cambridge University for graduate studies, from whence she could go “hang out in London with all these pagans and magicians—for the most part educated and middle-class people—and plunge into this really batty dissertation on modern witches.” The goal was not to rule on the validity of magic. Luhrmann was more interested in the magical process, in what happened in the minds of the practitioners. “I was really taken by my observation that something does happen. I didn’t quite know how to think about it, but they experienced something directly.” Luhrmann did “what anthropologists do” and participated in their world by joining their groups, reading their books, and performing rituals. For 30 minutes a day for nine months, she practiced seeing with her mind’s eye, following instructions such as: Build up in imagination a journey from your physical plane home to your ideal room. What startled her was that her witchcraft self-training worked. Her internal awareness seemed to shift; her senses felt more alive and alert. She had her own supernatural experience: One night, after she’d done some pleasurable and immersive reading about the early Celts, six druids appeared outside her window and just as suddenly vanished. “Had they been there in the flesh? I thought not,” she writes in When God Talks Back, but the vivid, singular experience led her to wonder “for many years if something about the practice associated with magic made these supernatural experiences more common. When I encountered the same spiritual techniques in experiential evangelical Christianity, I was determined to find out.” In 2007, to better understand if and how spiritual practice impacts the mind, Luhrmann randomly divided Christian volunteers into groups: One listened on iPods for 30 minutes a day to lectures on the Gospels, while another participated in a more interactive, imagination-rich way, similar to the prayer style of Vineyard members. Their recordings invited them to see, hear, and touch God in the mind’s eye, to carry on a dialogue with Jesus. “I found that after a month of prayer practice, people reported more vivid mental imagery than those who listened to the lectures,” she says. “They used mental imagery more readily and had somewhat better perceptual attention, and they reported more unusual sensory experience. In short, they attended to their inner experience more seriously, and that altered how real that experience became for them.” The night before Luhrmann appeared at the Vineyard congregation, she read and answered questions at a Bay Area bookstore. She traced the modern history of the evangelical movement from its hippie, Jesus-freak roots of the 1960s to its current, mostly conservative, mostly middle-class state. She talked about the people whose stories give the book its narrative pull, people whose faith proved more complex than she had imagined. This was an entirely different crowd. A couple of atheists ranted about how people who talk to God must be nuts. Another person in the audience, a little more measured, wanted Luhrmann to address the impact that conservative evangelicals are having on the country’s political landscape. It is not a small impact. Of the many baby boomers who once stopped going to churches, half have returned to religious practices, but not to the mainstream services of their childhood. They have flocked to churches similar to the Vineyard. A recent study found that nearly 40 percent of Americans said that the main reason they practice religion was “to forge a personal relationship with God.” Some call this movement the country’s fourth Great Awakening—a reference to other eras in American history in which religious fervor shaped the national agenda. While Luhrmann intentionally avoided politics in the book, it comes up in interviews and reviews, as readers and critics wonder if the author “ever engaged her subjects in a lively conversation about gay marriage or evolution.” Her answer is that conservative evangelicals and secular liberals are at such odds politically because they think about life very differently. If political progressives really want to stop scratching their heads over why evangelicals get so upset about same-sex marriage and health-care reform, they need to understand how evangelicals think about God. “Secular liberals want to create the social conditions that allow everyday people, behaving the way ordinary people behave, to have fewer bad outcomes,” she says. “When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately about what kind of person they are trying to become—what humans could and should be, rather than who they are. From this perspective, the problem with government is that it steps in when people fall short.” Hanging out with believers—whom she found “smarter and more varied than many liberals realize”—has given her some insight that could double as political advice. “If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear. They should talk about the kind of people we are aiming to be and about the transformational journey that any choice will take us on.” Reprinted with permission from Stanford magazine, published by Stanford Alumni Association, Stanford University. – Sent from The Week iPad edition – All You Need To Know About Everything That Matters Download the app and try The Week for free: http://iTunes.com/apps/theweekmagazineus Jim Wiegel Jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com “One cannot live in the afternoon of life according to the program of life’ s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” – Carl Jung Partners in Participation Upcoming public course opportunities: ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 11-12, 2012 ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012 The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Sept 7, 2012 Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, 2012 See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website for further details. _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list Dialogue(a)lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net

1 0

Re: [Oe List ...] From The Week: Hearing the voice of God
by Del Morril 19 Aug '12

19 Aug '12

Wow & Wow! This comes at a really good time for me, who tends to respond, when asked "what are you" (religiously, that is), "I guess I'm a Pentecostal Methodist Hindu". Actually, I probably could add a couple of other things where one "fills in the blanks" depending upon what day I'm thinking about how I reconcile a "personal god" over against the realities of life around this world, and my own personal experiences in the past, many of which can't be explained from any rational viewpoint. This writer is amazing, coming from such an interesting perspective, and fresh and open angle. I do thank you, Jim, for sharing it with us. Del -----Original Message----- From: oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of James Wiegel Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2012 8:02 AM To: Colleague Dialogue; Order Ecumenical Community Subject: [Oe List ...] From The Week: Hearing the voice of God Seems quite intriguing. Has anyone read this book? Hearing the voice of God When an anthropologist studied how evangelicals pray, says Jill Wolfson, she came to a surprising realization.

1 0

From The Week: Hearing the voice of God
by James Wiegel 19 Aug '12

19 Aug '12

Seems quite intriguing. Has anyone read this book? Hearing the voice of God When an anthropologist studied how evangelicals pray, says Jill Wolfson, she came to a surprising realization. On a Sunday evening in Palo Alto, Calif., around 50 members of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of the Peninsula gathered in a rented room above a popular coffee shop. Before the occasion got under way, the conversation was a friendly and exuberant mix of the mundane and the heady: the gorgeous weather, Christian writer C.S. Lewis, the lusciousness of the strawberries set out as a snack, someone’s car trouble, the problem of demons. Lead pastor Alex Van Riesen, a tall, informal, open-faced man, got everyone settled and quiet. “For those of you who haven’t been to our church, this is the way it is,” Van Riesen began cheerfully. “Everyone hangs outside eating, drinking coffee, and talking. Then, when you hear the voice of God, you come inside.” There was a burst of laughter: an evangelical joke for an evangelical Christian audience. Van Riesen then segued to the main event. “Have people been asking you about the book?” he asked the group. “I’ve been getting lots of email about it.” The book in question, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God, is about the people in this very room. On the makeshift stage next to Van Riesen sat its author, Tanya Luhrmann, who spent two years studying this Vineyard church and another two years at a Vineyard church in Chicago. She knows these believers well. Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried, and raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home prayer groups whose members reported hearing God communicate to them directly. She hung out, participated, took notes, recorded interviews, and “tried to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate.” Members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings, and getting God’s advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy. After being introduced jokingly by Van Riesen as Professor Luhrmann to people who have known her for so long as Tanya, she told the group her book does not weigh in on the actual existence of God. Rather, her research focuses on “theory of mind,” how we conceptualize our minds and those of others. In this case, she investigated how the practice of prayer can train a person to hear what they determine to be God’s voice. “I do think that if God does speak to someone, God speaks through the human mind,” she explained. “As an anthropologist, I feel I can say something about the social, cultural, and psychological features of what that person is experiencing. I came into this project wanting to understand the question: How are rational, sensible, educated people able to sustain faith in an invisible being in an environment of skepticism?” Luhrmann’s provocative theory is that the church teaches those who pray to use their minds differently than they do in everyday life. They begin by holding conversations with God in their heads, modeled on the kind of chummy conversations they’d have with their best friends. As they talk to Him, tell Him about their problems, and imagine His wise counsel and loving response, they are training their thoughts, much as people use weights to train their muscles. The church encourages them to tune in to sounds, images, and feelings that are louder or more intense or more unfamiliar or more powerful—and to interpret these internal cues as the external voice of God. “I came in with a set of stereotypes of evangelicals—the kind that you’d expect from someone in the academy,” she said. “I came out with more respect for the religious process...how private and precious the experience of God can be for people.” She read from her book’s final chapter: “I have said that I do not presume to know ultimate reality. But it is also true that through the process of this journey, in my own way, I have come to know God.” Luhrmann’s work has roots deep in her intellectual and emotional past. She describes herself as an anthropologist with one foot in psychology. She could easily add that her other foot is in theology and both hands have a firm grasp on philosophy. Her upbringing was that of a “spiritual mutt.” In the book’s preface and acknowledgments, she writes that she has been thinking about God ever since her maternal grandfather, a Baptist minister, “walked across the park with me when I was 6 and tried to explain who he thought God was.” His daughter—Luhrmann’s mother—took her children to the more free-form Unitarian church. Luhrmann’s paternal grandfather was a Christian Scientist whose son—Luhrmann’s father—became a medical doctor, a psychiatrist. The eldest of three children, Tanya was raised in a suburban New Jersey neighborhood, where she helped Orthodox Jewish neighbors as a shabbas goy, a gentile who assists with activities that are restricted on the Sabbath, such as turning on light switches. “I came from this background where I knew smart, good people whom I loved, but who came down on very different positions on the existence of God—not only on the yes-no dimension, but on who God was.” As a Harvard freshman, she had thoughts about Immanuel Kant that, in many ways, set the course of her career. She decided that the philosopher was “cheating” when he “explained away” the irrational. “I’ve always been intrigued by myths and stories and the way people construct their world. People live in the narrative, and that is more important than their logical sensibility in many ways. So I switched from philosophy to folklore....I was just so curious about people and about the way they come to hold their beliefs—even in the face of evidence to the contrary.” An academic mentor encouraged her to pursue graduate studies at the University of Chicago, but a chance encounter with a volume in the Harvard bookstore sent her in a different direction. “It was a book that told you how to be a witch,” she recalls with a laugh. “I was amazed by this. You can learn that?” She headed to Cambridge University for graduate studies, from whence she could go “hang out in London with all these pagans and magicians—for the most part educated and middle-class people—and plunge into this really batty dissertation on modern witches.” The goal was not to rule on the validity of magic. Luhrmann was more interested in the magical process, in what happened in the minds of the practitioners. “I was really taken by my observation that something does happen. I didn’t quite know how to think about it, but they experienced something directly.” Luhrmann did “what anthropologists do” and participated in their world by joining their groups, reading their books, and performing rituals. For 30 minutes a day for nine months, she practiced seeing with her mind’s eye, following instructions such as: Build up in imagination a journey from your physical plane home to your ideal room. What startled her was that her witchcraft self-training worked. Her internal awareness seemed to shift; her senses felt more alive and alert. She had her own supernatural experience: One night, after she’d done some pleasurable and immersive reading about the early Celts, six druids appeared outside her window and just as suddenly vanished. “Had they been there in the flesh? I thought not,” she writes in When God Talks Back, but the vivid, singular experience led her to wonder “for many years if something about the practice associated with magic made these supernatural experiences more common. When I encountered the same spiritual techniques in experiential evangelical Christianity, I was determined to find out.” In 2007, to better understand if and how spiritual practice impacts the mind, Luhrmann randomly divided Christian volunteers into groups: One listened on iPods for 30 minutes a day to lectures on the Gospels, while another participated in a more interactive, imagination-rich way, similar to the prayer style of Vineyard members. Their recordings invited them to see, hear, and touch God in the mind’s eye, to carry on a dialogue with Jesus. “I found that after a month of prayer practice, people reported more vivid mental imagery than those who listened to the lectures,” she says. “They used mental imagery more readily and had somewhat better perceptual attention, and they reported more unusual sensory experience. In short, they attended to their inner experience more seriously, and that altered how real that experience became for them.” The night before Luhrmann appeared at the Vineyard congregation, she read and answered questions at a Bay Area bookstore. She traced the modern history of the evangelical movement from its hippie, Jesus-freak roots of the 1960s to its current, mostly conservative, mostly middle-class state. She talked about the people whose stories give the book its narrative pull, people whose faith proved more complex than she had imagined. This was an entirely different crowd. A couple of atheists ranted about how people who talk to God must be nuts. Another person in the audience, a little more measured, wanted Luhrmann to address the impact that conservative evangelicals are having on the country’s political landscape. It is not a small impact. Of the many baby boomers who once stopped going to churches, half have returned to religious practices, but not to the mainstream services of their childhood. They have flocked to churches similar to the Vineyard. A recent study found that nearly 40 percent of Americans said that the main reason they practice religion was “to forge a personal relationship with God.” Some call this movement the country’s fourth Great Awakening—a reference to other eras in American history in which religious fervor shaped the national agenda. While Luhrmann intentionally avoided politics in the book, it comes up in interviews and reviews, as readers and critics wonder if the author “ever engaged her subjects in a lively conversation about gay marriage or evolution.” Her answer is that conservative evangelicals and secular liberals are at such odds politically because they think about life very differently. If political progressives really want to stop scratching their heads over why evangelicals get so upset about same-sex marriage and health-care reform, they need to understand how evangelicals think about God. “Secular liberals want to create the social conditions that allow everyday people, behaving the way ordinary people behave, to have fewer bad outcomes,” she says. “When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately about what kind of person they are trying to become—what humans could and should be, rather than who they are. From this perspective, the problem with government is that it steps in when people fall short.” Hanging out with believers—whom she found “smarter and more varied than many liberals realize”—has given her some insight that could double as political advice. “If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear. They should talk about the kind of people we are aiming to be and about the transformational journey that any choice will take us on.” Reprinted with permission from Stanford magazine, published by Stanford Alumni Association, Stanford University. – Sent from The Week iPad edition – All You Need To Know About Everything That Matters Download the app and try The Week for free: http://iTunes.com/apps/theweekmagazineus Jim Wiegel Jfwiegel(a)yahoo.com “One cannot live in the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” – Carl Jung Partners in Participation Upcoming public course opportunities: ToP Facilitation Methods, Sept 11-12, 2012 ToP Strategic Planning, Oct 9-10, 2012 The AZ Community of Practice meets the 1st Friday- Sept 7, 2012 Facilitation Mastery : Our Mastering the Technology of Participation program is available in Phoenix in 2012-3. Program begins on Nov 14-16, 2012 See short video http://partnersinparticipation.com/?page_id=55 and website for further details.

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8/6/12, Spong: The Pacific School of Religion and Theological Education for Tomorrow’s Christianity
by Ellie Stock 17 Aug '12

17 Aug '12

Homepage My Profile Essay Archive Message Boards Calendar The Pacific School of Religion and Theological Education for Tomorrow’s Christianity I spent a week recently teaching in the summer session of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. It was a demanding schedule of four hours a day from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on each of the five days of that week. This opportunity forced me to think about the state of theological education in the United States and to wonder about its adequacy to meet the crises the Christian Church faces in the 21st century. In this column I share those thoughts. The Pacific School of Religion illustrates well the past and the future state of training of church leaders. This seminary is part of the consortium of theological schools that surround the University of California in Berkeley. Each of these schools began its life as a west coast seminary serving its particular denomination. Each one, therefore, built its own chapel, dormitory, refectory and library. The unconscious, and therefore largely unspoken, idea was to re-create the English, Scottish, German and European model in which theological education is part of a university setting and presumably, in dialogue with the expansion of knowledge that is the essence of university life. It was essentially a Protestant model that sees ministry in terms of engagement with the world, not a monastic process of withdrawal from the world. Over the half century between the end of World War II and the end of the second millennium, Protestant Christianity went through many changes. Much of its self-understanding, while not admitted, had been tribal in nature. Episcopalians tended to be the worshiping descendants of English immigrants, Presbyterians of Scottish immigrants and Lutherans of German and Scandinavian immigrants. Roman Catholics also are primarily descendants of the nations of Southern Europe and Ireland. As is the case with all sweeping generalizations, this conclusion has many exceptions to the rule, but it is, nonetheless, broadly accurate. When the generations went by and intermarriage occurred people began to forget their country of origin and its special worship patterns and Christianity in America became homogenized and at the same time began to splinter into many patterns, sometimes quite congregational and individualistic as new identity was sought. Methodism became very much the Anglican Church Americanized and was the primary religion of the frontier as it moved westward. The United Church of Christ claimed its Zwinglian roots and took on a more radical flavor. Baptist and Pentecostal groups proliferated and began to exhibit an anti-intellectual bias. The Unitarians on the other hand took up the intellectual challenge, feeling stifled by the creeds and doctrines of the traditional churches. Inevitably, as the years rolled by denominational (i.e. tribal) loyalty began to fade. Each Christian tradition had within it those who wanted to walk the frontiers of new understanding and those who wanted to defend the “unchanging past” with increasing determination. This meant that cross-denominational alliances began to form that linked the progressives together on one end and the traditionalists on the other. Among the denominational seminaries, the realization also began to dawn that biblical and theological scholarship was not the possession of a single tradition. There is no such thing as conservative or liberal scholarship; there is only competent or incompetent scholarship. There was, therefore, no real need to have separate libraries at each theological school in a specific geographical area or to replicate professors in the same academic disciplines in separate schools. The case was still made that specific things like liturgy, chapel worship, clergy ordination formation, canon law and denominational history might need to be handled individually by the separate schools, but other disciplines were common to them all. These were the forces that pushed denominational schools toward a consortium. The schools around the University of California in Berkeley were ideally suited by dint of their location to lead this change. The first step was to combine all of the denominational schools’ libraries into a single facility able to serve all the students, thus maximizing the books that were available and the services that a large library could offer. The next step was to allow the enrollment of all students in any class offered by any part of the consortium, thus maximizing the courses that would be available and stopping senseless replication of teaching resources. Each school kept its own requirements for the awarding of degrees, but full credit would be accorded for classes taken at any member school of the consortium. The denominational schools thus became participants in an entity called “The Graduate Theological Union,” where doctorates were offered and a summer school, open to all of each school’s graduates, was available. So more and more of the students at each theological center studied and formed friendships among and with those who would be clergy in all traditions. Denominational concerns began a slow, but inevitable retreat. In time, the Berkeley Graduate Theological Union, for a variety of reason, some more noble than others, gave up its responsibility for the summer school, but one of its constituent members, namely the Pacific School of Religion, agreed to pick it up and to continue to run a fully accredited program, but on an ecumenical basis. I have been on the faculty of this summer school under the aegis of both the Graduate Theological Union and the Pacific School of Religion on six different occasions. Each of these opportunities has been unique and worthwhile. My classes have ranged from about fifty students to over a hundred. Representing a wide sweep of traditions, between half and two-thirds of these students were ordained graduates of a particular theological seminary, who were returning in the summer for “continuing education.” Others in the class were those still in pursuit of their divinity degrees and theologically interested lay people. My students this summer included ordained clergy who were Congregationalists (UCC), Presbyterians, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalians, Quakers, Unitarians, Baptists and Roman Catholics. Two rabbis also enrolled enriching us all. An unexpected serendipity of the development of theological consortiums has been that the member schools have begun to define themselves more sharply. In my own theological training, my seminary and most of the Episcopal centers for preparing clergy defined their vocation as “generalists,” preparing men and women for ministry in the broader definitions of Episcopal Church life. One seminary might emphasize pastoral ministry, another liturgics, another intellectual concerns and another social action ministry, but generally Episcopal seminary graduates could serve almost all of our churches. As “normal” church life began to fade, however, in both importance and in its appeal to the increasingly secular population, this “general” preparation began to have a limited value and the cry for bolder action was heard, but all too often ignored as a threat to denominational support. When a fire destroyed the chapel at one seminary, the immediate emphasis was to build a bigger and better chapel to continue the same kind of liturgical activity that people are today abandoning in droves. Strange mottos like “progressive orthodoxy” were adopted to suggest that no radical new thrust in clergy preparation was required. The Pacific School of Theology, affiliated with the United Church of Christ, the Methodists and the Disciples of Christ traditions, however, decided that rising indifference to traditional religious activity represented a new opportunity. Their vocation, they declared in both word and deed, was to engage the world in which they found themselves living. Scholarship, therefore, would not be compromised to protect the insecurities of the faithful. Biblical studies would be encouraged to come out of the academy and be introduced to the people in the pews. If the operative church definition of God could not stand against the onslaught of scientific knowledge they would let that old definition die rather than trying to respirate it artificially. They would no longer be interested in defending the creedal formulas of the 4th century that no educated person in our age can accept. They would no longer be interested in coddling those students who still wanted to diminish women, people of color or gay and lesbian people. This school thus began to define itself publicly, to announce to would-be students exactly who they were and what their students should expect. If this was not the kind of theological education that applying students wanted then they should look elsewhere. People listened and took notice. The Pacific School of Religion still trains pastors, but pastors who want to live in, speak to and engage the religious concerns of the future, not the religious concerns of the past. So at PSR experiments with new forms of ministry appeared and things tied to an older world disappeared. Will it work? Will people gravitate toward this attempt to discover a future for Christianity? Only time will tell, but one sign of success is already apparent. The Methodist Theological School at Drew University in New Jersey went in search of a new dean a year ago. They found him on the faculty of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. His name is Jeffrey Kuan, a professor of Old Testament. If the Drew Theological School can build a bold training center for clergy on the east coast to match the excitement that the Pacific School of Religion has created on the west coast, perhaps a new kind of clergy will emerge – those committed to Christian ministry, but not afraid of knowledge; those willing to rethink traditional symbols; those even willing to offend the ones who have not progressed beyond their 4th grade Sunday School understanding of God for the sake of the future. If that occurs, something new in theological education and clergy training will begin to appear. PSR gives me hope. So does Drew Theological School. I salute them both with great expectations. ~John Shelby Spong Read the essay online here. Question & Answer Catherine Berry Stidsen, PhD, writes: Question: I wonder if you have ever thought abut producing a monthly homily for those of us weary to death of two hundred years of scripture scholarship being ignored in what we hear. Last week it was, “You are Peter...” and not one word about whether or not Jesus actually said it or even that the original building was to be of a polis. Some years ago I did this for some of my friends and posted them to me website at www.chartherineberrystidsen.org but I do not have your expertise or pastoral experience. I’m a Catholic laywoman, now widowed, who took seriously the documents of Vatican II and trained to the PhD level to be one of those laics who were to balance the clerical mind set in decisions in my church. Of course, I have no forum to do so. Anyway, just a thought from a weary traveler in Christian country. Answer: Dear Catherine, No, I haven’t though about producing a monthly homily. I write this column once a week and that is all I can manage. I also think a homily or a sermon is part of the life of a worshiping community and draws its strength and power from the common life of the worshipers. A sermon delivered by e-mail and read individually is not in my opinion an effective tool of communication. I certainly share with you a despair over much that passes as preaching. I will never forget listening to two dreadful sermons in a row from two different preachers during the Christmas season on the innkeeper from Luke’s gospel. One suggested that the innkeeper was sensitive to Mary’s need for privacy given her near term condition. The other said the innkeeper was like his mother for whom there was always room for one more around the dinner table. The thing of interest to me was that there is no innkeeper in Luke’s Christmas narrative or anywhere else in the Bible. That is a creation of pageant directors and myth makers. I see this column largely in terms of being an online class in Bible study. My hope is that as biblical scholarship is improved, it will carry preaching with it. Thanks for writing. I love listening to sermons as a worshiper in my parish church. We have a great rector and a great congregation. ~John Shelby Spong Announcements Any questions or concerns, please contact us at support(a)johnshelbyspong.com or 503-236-3545. Copyright © 2012 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have a membership at our website. Our mailing address is: ProgressiveChristianity.org 4916 Pt Fosdick Dr, NW #148 Gig Harbor, WA 98335 Add us to your address book

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Book List
by jlepps＠pc.jaring.my 15 Aug '12

15 Aug '12

Here's partial list of books that have influenced me: I. Business In search of Excellence Peters and Waterman: a documentation of how excellent companies operate humanly Built to Last Collins and Porras: documentation of how visionary companies operate beyond a quest for profits with a purpose of benefitting society Borderless Business Mann & Goetz: Essays on working effectively in the global society includes the social process triangle & corporate process triangle II. Society The End of American Exceptionalism Bechovich (sp?): The challenge to become one in the world of nations rather than THE one. Riding the Waves of Culture Trompenaars & Hampden/Turner: Identifying the characteristics of different cultures, both national and company. The Nature of Prejudice Gordon Allport: Somewhat old, but a classic on the dynamics of social and racial prejudice The Secular City Harvey Cox: the urban revolution has happened and is worth celebrating III. Theology Radical Monotheism and Western Culture H. Richard Niebuhr: Spells out the paradox of monotheism: All is unworthy and all is good! The History of Christian Thought Paul Tillich: A fantastic and readable story of how and why theology developed the way it has (transcribed lectures) The Noise of Solemn Assemblies Peter Berger: The Churchs sociological reality belies its theological intents Christ Without Myth Schubert Ogden: Getting beyond the stories to the reality that the Christ story communicates Bending History, I & II -- J.W. Mathews: Joes classic theological and sociological talks. IV. Fiction The George Smiley Trilogy (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honorable Schoolboy; Smileys People) John LeCarre: The hero was personally inept but professionally outstanding in serving a cause higher than the immediate circumstances. Were sort of undercover agents for the Other World, and Ive found George to be an inspiring role model. The Harry Potter Series (1-7) J.K. Rowlings: She sets up 2 parallel universes, one normal and the other wondrous (but they are actually the same universe); the business of wizards is to protect us muggles from perceiving the wonders that are present. Our mission, on the other hand, is to help our clients and colleagues to perceive and appreciate this wondrous universe. John Epps

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Re: [Oe List ...] Joyce Quimby
by Del Morril 15 Aug '12

15 Aug '12

Jaime, thanks for sharing this. Joyce, Don and their family were really important to us when we first opened the work in Japan. The pages on CaringBridge allow so little message letters, that I would be grateful if you have an e-mail address for her or at least one of her daughters. Many thanks, Del _____ From: oe-bounces(a)lists.wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces@lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Jaime R Vergara Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 1:49 AM To: oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net Subject: [Oe List ...] Joyce Quimby Those in this listserv who knew of the Quimbys (Tokyo and Manila), Joyce Quimby, like the rest of us, lives with her own case of 'physical disability', in her case, cancer. One of her daughters got her a page in CaringBridge and I would recommend that those of had known them might want to visit the site and sign-in, at least, or leave a word or two. <http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/joycequimby> http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/joycequimby Joyce husband, Don, was a CEO for Union Carbide in Manila until he was diagnosed with cancer from what I gathered was unprotected exposure to radiation while serving in Nevada in the early days of atomic radiation tests. He organized a Town Meeting that Mary Lou and I, and another Order member whose name I have forgotten (kiss my Alz), facilitated. From Majuro, I went back to do a follow-up, in time to give the eulogy at Don's funeral. As our memories wane, those who remember the Quimbys might give her site a read. j'aime la vie china

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Fwd: War Reality Show Worse Than Feared
by Herman Greene 14 Aug '12

14 Aug '12

I promise not to send a bunch of these to this list, but I think what NBC is doing is outrageous. Maybe some of you will wish to sign this petition and forward it. 33,000 have now signed this. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: RootsAction Team <info(a)rootsaction.org> Date: Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 11:24 AM Subject: War Reality Show Worse Than Feared To: shirleysbb(a)gmail.com GRAPHIC: Roots Action logo header <https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/6503/images/RA_Header.jpg> <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=GQQEluLGaEpdvsY8WZKmXgO 2nhK1zyn4> Shame! Shame! War is not a game! <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=40P2IqZ040b5u%2BoPD1fI5 gz4gQ2uIUDO> <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=8SatyLmrh3yehO9HOxWnmQz 4gQ2uIUDO> GRAPHIC: Sign here button <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ft82aEJDmVoQIENus7Q9ggz 4gQ2uIUDO> Share this action on Facebook <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=m1IL1GjnRvshVBKBHAKiXgz 4gQ2uIUDO> Share this action on Twitter NBC's "reality show" war competition "Stars Earn Stripes" debuted Monday as activists protested at NBC headquarters and delivered the petition that already <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=FiAchNO%2BtKffG40QsWAaH Qz4gQ2uIUDO> 18,000 of us have signed. Can you please <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=WrgumtIjBxLIuQM4jbxi%2B QO2nhK1zyn4> sign it and forward this to all your friends? And scroll down on the webpage for an amazing new video by Lee Camp called <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=KN06GSPvqv9Mp03mJEVLSwz 4gQ2uIUDO> "Why Can't War Be Fun for the Whole Family?" Nine Nobel Peace Prize laureates have called for the show's cancelation, writing: "Real war is down in the dirt deadly. People -- military and civilians -- die in ways that are anything but entertaining." Our wars kill huge numbers of people, primarily civilians, and often children and the elderly. NBC is not showing this reality on its war-o-tainment show any more than on its news programs. Other nations' media show the face of war, giving people a very different view of war-making. In the United States, our tax dollars are spent by the billions each year marketing the idea that war is a sport and associating the military with sporting events. Media companies like NBC are complicit in the propaganda. While 57% of federal discretionary spending goes to the military, weapons makers can't seem to get enough of our tax dollars. In the spirit of transferring veterans' care to the realm of private charity, "Stars Earn Stripes" will give prize money each week to "military-based charities" in order to "send a message." <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=AhFQHv5%2BexgBQAKDJjoCr gz4gQ2uIUDO> We have our own message that we will be delivering to NBC: Dont lie to us. One of NBC's corporate parents, General Electric, takes war very seriously, but not as human tragedy -- rather, as financial profit. (GE is a big weapons manufacturer.) A retired general hosting a war-o-tainment show is another step in the normalization of permanent war. Please sign a short petition to NBC. <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ox82R50bAKD%2FDjNyFvmCy Qz4gQ2uIUDO> Please forward this email widely to like-minded friends. --The RootsAction team P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, and many others. - Partners: <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=vcfyLvNHopba3mf5o%2Ficn Qz4gQ2uIUDO> <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=qfORuqlblh%2BlY75dLL66s Qz4gQ2uIUDO> <https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/6503/images/vfplogo.jpg> Background: Nine Nobel Peace Laureates Call on NBC to Cancel <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=WrgumtIjBxIrGarzGXWXegO 2nhK1zyn4> "Stars Earn Stripes" <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=13YC9j5d5j32b%2FdHkn%2F igQz4gQ2uIUDO> NBC's <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=i1MKbDqlyzW8VsdRIr%2B%2 FqAz4gQ2uIUDO> "Stars Earn Stripes" -- produced by the TV "genius" behind Donald Trump's "Apprentice" and "Sarah Palin's Alaska." (Husband Todd Palin is a "Stars Earn Stripes" co-star.) <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=eG7Bi73%2Bvd2NF2OIffOti Qz4gQ2uIUDO> Democracy Now! Confronts Wesley Clark Over His Bombing Of Civilians -- During the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia commanded by Gen. Wesley Clark, civilians and a TV station were bombed, while cluster bombs and depleted uranium were used. (Had Clark done these things for another nation, NBC would probably favor his prosecution and certainly not employ him.) <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=EotwyNBH5EgWW6glXbnvXQz 4gQ2uIUDO> New York Times: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=bHoNbWobQDa6hPE6fcHHEAz 4gQ2uIUDO> Glenn Greenwald: The Pulizer-Winning Investigation That Dare Not Be Uttered on TV -- NBC news programs have repeatedly used retired generals, pretending independence but getting their pro-war talking points from the Pentagon. Resources to Help NBC Show the Reality of War: <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=tEnnDOJkexQdUEN6qUAQPQz 4gQ2uIUDO> http://StarsEarnStripes.org <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=bmRImKEvmWB3AywCEaJ5kAz 4gQ2uIUDO> Donate button <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=sZ4i2pgbfd0msnHSEpx5dwz 4gQ2uIUDO> Facebook button <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=enVlHfaWTRI7iEI1nS%2BQA wz4gQ2uIUDO> Twitter button Click here <http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=vctjbs7m8Yt91K7HJ2DoDAz 4gQ2uIUDO> to unsubscribe and stop ALL email from RootsAction. 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The death of Rev. Zan White
by David M Dunn 14 Aug '12

14 Aug '12

Colleagues. I've attached a flyer that announces the death of Rev. Zan White, the husband of Jan Peterson, the Chairperson of the Huairou Commission's Secretariat. Zan died last week in a drowning accident. I understand from Dick Alton that Jan and her husband have been colleagues who lived in a religious house many years ago. I wonder if others know of the Zan White-Jan Peterson family and have any memories they could share. David ps. I'm currently working with two of Jan's staff members on a Grassroots Women's Community Justice Guide, a resource for facilitating women's land and property ownership in Africa, to be published by the Huairou Commission next month. David Dunn 740 S Alton Way 9B Denver, CO 80247 -- dmdunn1(a)gmail.com 720-314-5991

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Joyce Quimby
by Jaime R Vergara 14 Aug '12

14 Aug '12

Those in this listserv who knew of the Quimbys (Tokyo and Manila), Joyce Quimby, like the rest of us, lives with her own case of 'physical disability', in her case, cancer. One of her daughters got her a page in CaringBridge and I would recommend that those of had known them might want to visit the site and sign-in, at least, or leave a word or two. http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/joycequimby Joyce husband, Don, was a CEO for Union Carbide in Manila until he was diagnosed with cancer from what I gathered was unprotected exposure to radiation while serving in Nevada in the early days of atomic radiation tests. He organized a Town Meeting that Mary Lou and I, and another Order member whose name I have forgotten (kiss my Alz), facilitated. From Majuro, I went back to do a follow-up, in time to give the eulogy at Don's funeral. As our memories wane, those who remember the Quimbys might give her site a read. j'aime la vie china

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