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12/18/22 PHOTOS—B½ OF ARCHIVE PROJECT
by Frank Knutson 18 Dec '22

18 Dec '22

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12/15/2022, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Matthew Syrdal: An Advent Love-Poem to Holy Darkness; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

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screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv8621819120 #yiv8621819120templateBody .yiv8621819120mcnTextContent, #yiv8621819120 #yiv8621819120templateBody .yiv8621819120mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv8621819120 #yiv8621819120templateFooter .yiv8621819120mcnTextContent, #yiv8621819120 #yiv8621819120templateFooter .yiv8621819120mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} By Rev. Matthew Syrdal | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | An Advent Love-Poem to Holy Darkness | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Matthew Syrdal December 15, 2022You darkness from which I come, I love you more than all the fires that fence out the world, for the fire makes a circle for everyone so that no one sees you anymore. But darkness holds it all: the shape and the flame, the animal and myself, how it holds them, all powers, all sight —and it is possible: its great energy is breaking into my body. I have faith in the night.I have always loved this poem. Especially David Whyte’s translation from the German. Perhaps it is because I love Darkness. Do you know this feeling? A momentary awareness rapt in dark night. The utter stillness of a winter-scape at dusk. The deep feeling of slumbering instincts quickening into a wild and mysterious sense of closeness to all that is unapproachable during the daylight hours. It’s almost like a hunger for me, this desire to shed form, to stride out of doors into a night of formless beauty. Out beyond sight where the imagination soars as a heron in flight, and that feathered surge of dampening sound awakens alluring depths within our limited vision.Advent is a season especially attuned to the Darkness, and it’s rhythms—not primarily the light. For the Darkness has a strange luminosity all its own, but our eyes must readjust. David Whyte picks up on this theme in his poem Sweet Darkness “There, you can be sure you are not beyond love / The Dark will be your home tonight / The Night will give us a horizon further than we can see.” It offers imaginal landscapes for the soul, we are invited to slow to hushed walking pace through deserts and moorlands. Advent is myth-time. A time to wander and wonder, to remember as a people all we have lost. All that glances back at us, eyes glimmering across the circle of light we now stand in. Darkness is a kind of memory that reaches down and in through the feeling function, it holds encoded the memory of time and origins you might say. Advent is womb-time, and what is coming we cannot see but only feel. But one thing is for certain it is here, within and among, watching just beyond the ring of firelight. For me this poem is Rilke’s Advent birth narrative whether he intended it or not—it is mytho-poetic. His words can become our words, his love-prayer—our love-prayer. If we have the courage to seek the One beyond the fire circle.“You Darkness from which I come” - Du Dunkelheit, aus der ich stamme. The direct address to the Darkness—living, intimate, and sentient—is much more than stylized personification. We are invited to listen in as the poet speaks to the dark ground of his being in the quiet watches of the night. Speaks a poem of love to the dark God beyond the firelight of consciousness.“I love you more than all the fires that fence out the world, for the fire makes a circle [of light] for everyone so that no one sees you anymore. But the darkness holds it all.”Other translations speak of the fires that “fence in the world,” "als die Flamme, welche die Welt begrenzt,” but Whyte is seeing something important here in Rilke’s vision. The World dwells in night and it is we who no longer see her anymore. The dark keeper of the fire, whose embrace holds all. All laughter, all tears, all pain and fear, conflict and war. Nothing is excluded from the embrace of darkness.Advent is a season to let ourselves be held in the peculiar way that only darkness can do. It is an ancient song sung in the meandering hollows and wells of fallow time.The eternal feminine Darkness from which we all come, that great and nurturing Power that holds it all: /the shape and the flame, /the animal and myself, /how it holds them, /all powers, all sight —The “fire” that makes a “circle” is a profound image. For me it speaks to our promethean drive to be sole creators in a self-made world, alluding to both the primal technology of fire that symbolically defines our species and to its mythic origins in the collective unconscious. A powerful driver indeed behind our history of storytelling, Empire, and constant need to expand our territories.And so I want to push back just a bit against the masculine light-cult that is Western civilization, (symbolized for example in Edison and Tesla) and the modern era’s progressive banishment of darkness, and labeling of it as ‘evil’. The endless displays of visual connection, the need to make everything visible only to expose, to extract, to define, to control. As if we could domesticate the darkness. We may have cast it from our homes and churches, but It has just gone underground. We banished it with our promethean theologies because it didn’t support and export Christendom values.The printed word is fire, but the spoken word is darkness. Oral stories move and feed just inside the edge of the wood at night. But our printed word would appropriate oral wisdom for its own and post them like memes. A little sleight-of-hand trickery, so that we don’t have to really go into the dark where wisdom can be found. Advent and Christmas can be one of the few liturgical seasons we can really embrace the dark, really cultivate storytelling as a people, reclaim our myth-telling roots to counterbalance the artificial light of corporatized cultural ways the church unwittingly reinforces.Don’t get me wrong. We need Fire too. Fire is an archetypal image of spirit, and ingenuity, and creative advancement in ways never before dreamed possible. We need both the Fire and the Darkness. But perhaps the fire we stole from the gods has grown too big, and all of our “biggering” to borrow Dr. Seuss’ term, in both church and culture is spreading this fire. And perhaps too many forests are burning, and too many of the old songs and stories have gone up in smoke as sparks reaching for the stars.For me, Mythic Christ Mystery School has been an inquiry primarily into the darkness of the deep imagination—a realm of visionary consciousness—in order to begin to reclaim what is still alive and pulsing in the heart of the Christian mythos, through experiential practices and ways of being in community. We explore more broadly the nature of myth, archetype, story, encoded in sacred place and particular landscapes, to understand the scriptures and ourselves from the perspective of oral tradition, belonging and emergence.To counteract the structural forces of injustice and inequity on so many levels, it is important we take seriously other ways of knowing and being, remembering and becoming. We explore de-centered values that are sacred and truly supportive of soulful community. There are other ways to envision justice other than through the harsh daylight of politics and faith. Other ways of being church outside the brick and mortar walls, in wooded-walls clothed with moss and meadow, hanging usnea or apple bark. Late it is, in this fourth watch of the night. The hour of God. The thief who comes might just be the deliverer we need but don’t expect. May we return for now to the slow womb-time and deep dreamtime. The Day will come, but now is the hour of imagination and the dreaming.“And it is possible: its great Power is breaking into my body. I have faith in the night.”Du Dunkelheit, aus der ich stamme, ich liebe dich mehr als die Flamme, welche die Welt begrenzt, indem sie glänzt für irgend einen Kreis, aus dem heraus kein Wesen von ihr weiß.Aber die Dunkelheit hält alles an sich: Gestalten und Flammen, Tiere und mich, wie sie's errafft, Menschen und Mächte. --Und es kann sein: eine große Kraft rührt sich in meiner Nachbarschaft.~ Rev. Matthew SyrdalRead online here About the Author Matthew Syrdal, M.Div., is a pastor in the Denver area, a visionary, founder of Church of Lost Walls, and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt has begun a new venture called Mythic Christ, a mystery school and podcast for awakening mythic imagination and ritual embodiment. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country and his mentoring and coaching practice as a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute. His work weaves in myth, archetype, dreams, deep imagery, and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world of which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in discovering “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives, cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By A Reader How can we work to improve religious tolerance and increase respect for diversity? A: By Rev. Irene MonroeDear Reader,We are residing in such a polarized time. I wish the Christian Right would meet the right Christians to understand that religious tolerance embraces the fact that, as Americans, we are people of many faith traditions and are atheists, agnostics, and "nones." More than a decade now, when the December holiday season rolls in, we can always count on a yearly kerfuffle about what the appropriate season's greeting should be, exemplifying the continued chapter in the culture "War on Christmas." This year we can see the divide along religious and political party lines. On his "Merry Christmas USA Thank You Tour," former President Trump decorated his stages with Christmas trees. Former President Obama acknowledged other holidays this time of year - Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, Saturnalia, Festivus, and Ramadan - and embraced an all-inclusive seasonal greeting symbolic of our nation's diverse religious and cultural landscape with two simple words — Happy Holidays! According to Public Policy Polling (PPP), if you say "Merry Christmas," you insult liberals, and if you say "Happy Holidays," you vex conservatives. Also, PPP revealed that 57 percent of Republicans believe there's an ongoing war on Christmas. Truth be told, Muslims, secular progressives, Jews, and atheists have never been the folks trying to abolish Christmas. The intolerance of a multicultural theme for this holiday season has to do about a backlash toward a country growing more religiously pluralistic. This holiday's central message is embracing and celebrating human differences and diversity. And it is with this message that I know all people — religious and non-religious, straight and LGBTQ+, black and white — can be included to enjoy and to celebrate and acknowledge this season with one simple greeting. Happy Holidays!~ Rev. Irene Monroe Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Irene Monroe does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on NPR's WGBH (89.7 FM). She is a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS. Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists. A Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist, her columns appear in the Boston LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. Monroe states her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As a religion columnist, I try to inform the public of religion’s role in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit rely heavily on the good will of our donors to help us continue to bring individuals and churches the messages of progressive Christians, Weekly Newsletters, along with the many other resources we provide. For years, the majority of our fundraising came at the end of the year. Looking at various ways to create a more reasonable amount of cash flow we decided rather than having a BIG ask at the end of each year, our more frequent asks give folks a chance to contribute when their funds are more flexible. We think that's a win for everyone. We also want to highlight the opportunity to become a sustaining supporter. If you are looking for the best way to help us continue to provide progressive Christian resources, become a sustaining supporter by choosing Recurring Donation. Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary. | | | | | | | | | | | Don't miss the next Episode of PC.org's Executive Directors Mark and Caleb on: The Moonshine Jesus Show - every Monday at 4:30pm Eastern Time – watch live on Facebook,, YouTube, Twitter, Podbean | | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Birth of Jesus, Conclusions: Part XVI Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong June 20, 2013Luke concludes his birth story with a series of episodes designed to point to the story of the adult Jesus. First, in Luke’s story, the shepherds depart, while Mary “ponders,” then the “Holy Family” goes through the initiation rites of Judaism to root Jesus deeply inside of the faith of his people. He is circumcised, Luke says, on the eighth day and given the name Jesus (Joshua or Yeshuah in Hebrew/Aramaic). Then he is presented at the Temple on the 40th day, at which time a prophetess named Anna, later to be viewed in mythology as the mother of Mary, and an old priest named Simeon are introduced in brief cameo appearances. Simeon proclaims that in this baby he has seen the promised salvation that will bring light to the Gentiles and glory to Israel. Next, and in contrast to Matthew, who has the Holy Family flee into Egypt to avoid the wrath of Herod, Luke has them make a rather leisurely journey back to their home in Nazareth. This episode of Luke’s birth narrative is then closed with a summary statement informing his readers that “the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was with him.” This infancy narrative is thus completed.Luke then describes an episode that turns out to be the only story in the entire New Testament that purports to inform us about Jesus’ childhood. It is the narrative of the twelve year old Jesus being taken up to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover. It is a puberty rite story couched in religious terms, a kind of primitive bar mitzvah filled with familiar mythological content. It was designed to show just how remarkable the child Jesus really was long before his introduction to the wider public as an adult figure. It also has deep roots in the Hebrew Scriptures that we need to identify. Those familiar with these scriptures would also be familiar with the life of the prophet Samuel. He, like Jesus, was said to have had something of a miraculous birth. His mother Hannah was childless; she had been unable to conceive. In that patriarchal world, the woman was blamed for this condition and so she was called “barren.” She was one of two wives married to a man named Elkanah. His second wife, Peninnah, had children and was honored by her husband because of that. Hannah, however, felt shame at her inability to have a child and was even ridiculed by Peninnah because, as she said, “the Lord had closed her womb.” Hannah went up regularly to a “holy place,” the shrine at Shiloh. On one of those occasions, she was at the gate of the shrine weeping and praying for a child. In her prayers she stated her willingness to dedicate her child to God if her prayers were answered. In the emotional power of this prayer, she came to the attention of an old priest named Eli who thought at first that she was drunk.“How long will you be drunken?” he asks her as the conversation began. Hannah responded, “No, my Lord, I am a woman sorely troubled. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.” Hearing the content of her prayer, Eli promised her that her prayer would be answered. So he said to her: “Go in peace and may the God of Israel grant your petition.” Hannah then returned home and her barrenness was overcome; Samuel was born. It is a touching story.Luke is clearly familiar with the story of Hannah. When Hannah’s child, Samuel, was born, she sang a song of praise that began with the words: “My heart exults in the Lord.” Luke uses Hannah’s song as the model for the song he puts in the mouth of Mary that we call The Magnificat. The Magnificat begins with the words: “My soul magnifies the Lord.”I believe there is one other oblique reference to the story of Samuel in Luke’s birth narrative. In his genealogy of Jesus in chapter 3, Luke lists a person named Heli as the father of Joseph and thus the grandfather of Jesus. Heli is simply the Greek spelling of Eli. The old priest in the book of Samuel is thus related, Luke says, to the life of Jesus. Finally, when Mary and Joseph take the boy Jesus to present him in the Temple when he was 12 years old, Luke appears to base this story on the account of Hannah taking the boy Samuel “when he was weaned” to the shrine at Shiloh, where he would serve the priest Eli as the fulfillment of Hannah’s vow to dedicate her son, if she became pregnant with a boy, to the service of God. The visit to the Temple completed the cycle of Jewish initiatory liturgies. Jesus was, says Luke, circumcised on the 8th day, presented on the 40th day and dedicated at the age of 12 in the Temple at Jerusalem. The child Jesus was thus born with the destiny to serve God in all aspects of the Jewish tradition.This visit to the Temple at age 12 is also filled by Luke with hints of things to come. The boy Jesus claims the Temple for himself in his childhood, just as he will do later as an adult. In this episode, Jesus acknowledges God as his father, claiming this Temple “as my father’s house,” and stating that he must be about his “father’s business.” He is also in this narrative, said to have been lost “for three days” and when he was found, he was in the “my Father’s house,” revealing echoes of another three days in which Luke will say he was lost until raised by God into a new dimension of God’s presence. His body will then be referred to as the “New Temple.”It is interesting to note that Luke then moves immediately to the story of Jesus’ baptism by John in the River Jordan and the inauguration of his messianic career. Now Joseph disappears from Luke’s text and takes his place in the mythology of the ages, out of which he had come in the first place. With this story the birth narratives have completed their purpose. The meaning of Jesus’ life has been introduced to his followers. With this story we also reach the end of this series of columns, so it is time to summarize.There is nothing in the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke that was ever intended to be viewed as literal history. Both of these gospel authors knew that the birth narratives were designed to explain the source of power experienced in the adult Jesus of Nazareth. Both were trying to say that they had met a power and presence in the life of Jesus that human beings could not themselves have ever produced. Both picked symbols out of Hebrew history to flesh out their stories. Both knew that they were introducing a new idea into the developing Christian tradition. Both were surely aware that their stories of a miraculous birth for Jesus were unknown to Paul who portrayed Jesus as one who was “born of a woman,” as every human being is, and “born under the law,” as every Jew was. The only special claim Paul made for Jesus was that he “was descended from the House of David, according to the flesh.” God for Paul had declared Jesus to be the son of God, not through a miraculous birth, but through “his resurrection from the dead.” (See Romans 1:1-4).They also knew that Mark, whom both Matthew and Luke had incorporated into their gospel accounts, not only had no birth story, but he had also stated that God first entered Jesus at his baptism. Mark even portrayed Jesus’ mother as thinking that the adult Jesus was “beside himself” (see Mark 3), that is, “out of his mind,” when he came to his adult life. That is not the response of one who has been told in advance that her child will be holy, “the son of the highest.” No, both Matthew and Luke were not writing about the literal birth of Jesus. That will be the later agenda of the fundamentalists.Then we saw how these two evangelists developed their stories out of the Hebrew Scriptures. Matthew borrowed from Isaiah, who wrote of kings coming to the “brightness of God’s rising” and bringing with them “gold and frankincense,” to get his narrative of wise men and their guiding star. He adapted for his narrative of Jesus a Moses story about a wicked king who tried to destroy God’s anointed one at birth. He has Jesus repeat the life cycle of the Jewish nation by coming “out of Egypt.” He creates the character of Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, out of the account of Joseph the patriarch in the book of Genesis (37-50). The two Joseph’s are all but indistinguishable.Luke also borrows images from the Old Testament to describe the birth of John the Baptist. He lifts a story from the book of Daniel to explain how John’s father, Zechariah, got the news that he was to be a father and why he could not speak. He lifts the account of John post-menopausal birth out of the Abraham and Sarah story in the book of Genesis. He populates Bethlehem with shepherds because it was the birthplace of David, the “Shepherd King.” He borrows a text from Isaiah to get his manger and a text from the Wisdom of Solomon to get his “swaddling cloths.” Both narratives are artfully crafted pieces of haggadic Midrash. No Jewish reader would fail to notice that. The two stories are deeply contradictory if one treats them literally, but both serve as overtures to the story of the life of Jesus, introducing themes that will be developed more fully in their later gospel accounts.For most people the birth stories are probably the most familiar part of the New Testament. They are also probably the most misunderstood. They are victimized by the annual Christmas pageants held in most churches. They are distorted by hymns sung, oratorios heard and sermons preached each Christmas season. They are celebrated in lawn crèches built, Christmas cards sent and store windows dressed during the holiday season. Like all birth stories, however, they are not really about the birth of the hero, but about the adult life of the hero. Once we break them out of their literal prison, they take on a new wonder, a new meaning and a new power. That is what these 17 columns over the past two years have also been designed to do. I hope they have succeeded and that the next Christmas season can be entered with open minds and hearts and without the need to defend Jesus from those who think that the only way to be true to Jesus is to literalize the words of the New Testament.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements | | | Christian Mystics with Matthew Fox Thursday, December 15, 20227 7pm/ET 6pm CT- 5pm/MT-4pm PT The daily readings Matthew Fox shares here, quotations from Christianity’s greatest mystics and prophets of the past two thousand years, speak to the sacredness of the earth, awe and gratitude, darkness and shadow, compassion and creativity, sacred sexuality, and peacemaking. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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12/08/2022, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Irene Monroe: World AIDS Day 2022; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 08 Dec '22

08 Dec '22

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screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv1077299068 #yiv1077299068templateBody .yiv1077299068mcnTextContent, #yiv1077299068 #yiv1077299068templateBody .yiv1077299068mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv1077299068 #yiv1077299068templateFooter .yiv1077299068mcnTextContent, #yiv1077299068 #yiv1077299068templateFooter .yiv1077299068mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} By Rev. Irene Monroe | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | World AIDS Day 2022 | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Irene Monroe December 8, 2022 "For God shows no partiality." Romans 2:11 ESV "Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death." Martin Luther King, Jr. March 25, 1966 Medical Committee for Human Rights December 1st is World AIDS Day! With the COVID pandemic foremost on the minds of many, HIV/ AIDS seems like a distant problem. A POZ Poll asked its readers, "Are you participating in any World AIDS Day 2022 events?" On 11/28, when I responded to the poll questions, the results were 20 percent said "yes," 20 percent said "I don't know," and 60 percent said "no." In 1988, the World Health Organization designated the day to pause and reflect on the magnitude of the devastating effect this disease continues to have on domestic and global communities. Much of the focus still is on developing countries. However, African Americans are still disproportionately affected by the HIV epidemic. And the epidemic is heavily concentrated in urban enclaves like Boston, Detroit, New York, Newark, Washington, D.C., and the Deep South. In February, on National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day 2022, "POZ" reported that according to AIDSVu.org, African Americans in 2019 made up 43 percent of new HIV cases and comprised roughly 12- 13 percent of the U.S. population. This means that African Americans were 8.4 times more likely to contract the HIV infection than whites, according to The Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Massachusetts, where I reside, is a world-renowned medical hub known for its HIV/AIDS research and support systems, but the outcomes are equally grim. In 2019, according to a UMass Chan Medical School report titled "Burden of HIV & AIDS amongst the Black Community in Massachusetts…." African Americans comprise 7.3 percent of the population but represent 32 percent of people newly diagnosed with HIV. This means that the rate of African American males living with HIV is 5.2 times of Whites males, and the rate of African American females living with HIV is 22.7 times that of white females. African Americans who contract HIV are more likely to die from it than members of other racial groups. But this data doesn't reflect the wave of recent African diasporic immigrants of the last decade coming from the Caribbean Islands and the Motherland. This demographic group is overwhelmingly underreported and underserved—for fear of not only deportation but also of homophobic insults and assaults from their communities. In 2022, why is HIV/AIDS still an overwhelmingly Black disease in the United States? There are many persistent social and economic determinants contributing to the high rates of the epidemic in the African American community—poverty, homelessness, health care disparity, industrial prison complex, and violence, to name a few. And while we know that the epidemic moves along the fault lines of race, class, gender and sexual orientation, homophobia, stigma, and the Black Church continue to be barriers to ending the AIDS epidemic. However, the most significant obstacle is systemic racism. "I would not expect anything other than the data quoted. No matter what is being measured in America, you already know who will fare worse. Systems in America are designed to have this outcome, "said Dr. Thea James of Boston Medical Center, my spouse. Racism contributes to the high rate of AIDS among young African-American men. While gay healthcare centers open their doors to all gay men, these traditionally white organizations have failed to tailor their messages and outreach services to men of color. And while white gay men may feel the AIDS crisis in the African- American community is solely a black concern, white gay men must also be reminded that the AIDS crisis in the African-American community is their concern because they, too, have sex with black men. Poverty also helps HIV spread throughout the black community. With the high cost of life-saving drugs often coupled with the problem of homelessness, mere survival for these young men takes precedence over quality of life. Also, selling their bodies for drugs, a hot meal, temporary lodging, or a quick illusion of love lures many young gay black men to engage in risky and unprotected sex. In 2004, the now deceased Gwen Ifill, an African-American female journalist with PBS' "Washington Week" and moderator of the vice presidential debate, brought the issue of AIDS in the U.S. front and center when she asked the men-vice presidential candidates Dick Cheney and John Edwards-to comment on its devastating impact on African-American women. "I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country, where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts. What should the government's role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?" Ifill asked. When the color of the epidemic shifted from white to Black, the inherent gender bias focused only on the needs of African-American men and rendered women invisible. And when gender became a new lens to track the epidemic, white women were the focus. The invisibility of African-American women in this epidemic has much to do with how the absence of a gendered race analysis makes African-American women invisible to the larger society. The feminization of this disease made many of us AIDS activists and scholars wonder if the same amount of money, concern, communication, and moral outrage invested in white gay men with the disease would be invested into curbing its spread among black women. In 2021, The CDC declared racism a serious public health threat and its impact on health outcomes. World Aids Day 2021, the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (2022–2025) was released, bringing shockwaves to people of color with its goal to center people living with HIV and address racism. "The Strategy recognizes racism as a public health threat that directly affects the well-being of millions of Americans," the strategy states. "Over generations, these structural inequities have resulted in racial and ethnic health disparities that are severe, far-reaching, and unacceptable." The UNAIDS 2022 theme is "Putting Ourselves to the Test: Achieving Equity to End HIV." America has a problem confronting its racism, even among marginalized whites, like LGBTQIA+ communities. I hope the POZ Poll is incorrect and that many will participate in a World Aids Day event. But I feel assured that no matter who does or doesn't participate on that day, Black Lives living with HIV/AIDS are beginning to matter. "We can end AIDS – if we end the inequalities which perpetuate it. This World AIDS Day, we need everyone to get involved in sharing the message that we will all benefit when we tackle inequalities," says UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima. "To keep everyone safe, to protect everyone's health, we need to Equalize."~ Rev. Irene Monroe Read online here About the Author Rev. Irene Monroe does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on NPR's WGBH (89.7 FM). She is a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS. Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists. A Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist; her columns appear the Boston LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. Monroe states that her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As a religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By J. Edward In the interest of full disclosure, I am an Atheist. Why is it that most Christians insist that the Gospels were essentially dictated to (inspired) by God to write his unerring Word? Given the number of inconsistencies and that the narratives were clearly written by different authors who couldn’t even get the story straight, why is the Bible the go-to source for the answer to everything? A: By Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers Dear J. Edward,In the interest of full disclosure, I too am an atheist, although I prefer the term non-theist because it’s not a conversation stopper. As for the irreconcilably different accounts of the gospels, you are already far ahead of most church folk, who have been sold the lie that a harmonized view of the gospels is possible. It’s not. Serious biblical study reveals that each gospel takes liberties with the narrative in order to address the needs of the communities for which they were written. They were also written decades after the death of Jesus and depend on a remembered oral tradition that was as unreliable then as it is now. As to why the claim of divine authorship and biblical inerrancy is so important, human beings are always searching for a source of authority outside of ourselves. A pope for Catholics, a paper pope for Protestants. As to why the Bible is a go to source, it remains a formative story for Jews and Christians, and a collection of literature that is foundational in the history of ideas. But let’s face it. It contains both the sublime and the ridiculous. It never was, nor should it ever be considered infallible. It can be taken seriously without being taken literally, like most of the sacred and secular literature on earth. ~ Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers is pastor of First Congregational Church UCC, Norman, Oklahoma, and retired senior minister of Mayflower Congregational UCC church, Oklahoma City. He is currently a Professor of Public Speaking and Distinguished Professor of Social Justice Emeritus in the Philosophy Department at Oklahoma City University. He is a fellow of the Westar Institute and the author of eight books on religion and American culture, the most recent of which is, Saving God from Religion: A Minister’s Search for Faith in a Skeptical Age. A feature-length documentary chronicles his work on behalf of Progressive Christianity in Oklahoma (americanhereticsthefilm.com) and more information is at RobinMeyers.com | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit rely heavily on the good will of our donors to help us continue to bring individuals and churches the messages of progressive Christians, Weekly Newsletters, along with the many other resources we provide. For years, the majority of our fundraising came at the end of the year. Looking at various ways to create a more reasonable amount of cash flow we decided rather than having a BIG ask at the end of each year, our more frequent asks give folks a chance to contribute when their funds are more flexible. We think that's a win for everyone. We also want to highlight the opportunity to become a sustaining supporter. If you are looking for the best way to help us continue to provide progressive Christian resources, become a sustaining supporter by choosing Recurring Donation. Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary. | | | | | | | | | | | Don't miss the next Episode of PC.org's Executive Directors Mark and Caleb on: The Moonshine Jesus Show - every Monday at 4:30pm Eastern Time – watch live on Facebook,, YouTube, Twitter, Podbean | | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Birth of Jesus, Part XV The Journey to Bethlehem Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong June 13, 2013The creators of the birth narratives, Matthew and Luke, used two motifs in interpreting the life of Jesus of Nazareth. First, each was historically aware that Jesus hailed from Galilee, indeed from the village of Nazareth. Too often the gospels report that there was debate about his origins for this not to be true. Galilee was the rustic, poor, non-cultural part of the Jewish nation. Nazareth was an insignificant town in a looked-down-upon region. Yet, they could never escape the fact that Jesus was called “Jesus of Nazareth” and referred to as a Galilean. The claim of Jesus’ disciples that he was the messiah was thus ridiculed because of these historical facts of his origin. “Search the scriptures,” his critics invited the crowds to do, “and nowhere will you find the suggestion that the messiah will come out of Galilee.” It was thought even more impossible for the messiah to grow up in Nazareth. “Nothing good can come out of Nazareth,” they declared. History is sometimes quite inconvenient when myth-making is going on. This was the first motif of the birth narratives. The place of Jesus’ origins seems not to have been an issue for Paul. Mark, the first gospel writer, assumes that Jesus was born in Nazareth and that he grew up there. When his place of origin began to be a problem for those eager to assert the messianic claim, the pressure began to build to locate his place of birth in a more noble setting. That was when the second motif around his birth appeared and had to be served. There were many messianic images in Jewish history, but a major and consistent one was that the messiah had to restore the throne of King David. In time this meant that the messiah himself had to have a claim to be a descendent and thus an heir to the royal line of King David. That throne had been lost to the Jews since 586 BCE. In that year the Babylonian conquerors had destroyed Judah in warfare. In that war’s aftermath the Babylonians rounded up and murdered all the heirs to the final Davidic king, a man named Zedekiah, and they imprisoned him after putting out his eyes. When Zedekiah finally died in prison, the royal throne of the House of David was thus thought to be vacant. That was when the idea of messiah began to grow both in Jewish thought and in Jewish mythology. Messiah was part of the national dream of restoration. The royal line of King David was an important symbol in all the hopes expressed for “the coming kingdom.” One aspect of that hope was that the messiah would reflect his Davidic roots by being born in Bethlehem, the city of David. This hope was read into a text in the prophet Micah that extolled the little town of Bethlehem as the birthplace of Judah’s kings. Slowly, this town with its royal connections and its location in the land of Judah about six miles from Jerusalem, began to rise in the messianic dreams. Messiah must be of the house of David and he must be born in Bethlehem. Matthew was the first to make this claim, but it was easy for him. He assumed that both Mary and Joseph lived in a house in Bethlehem. For this baby to be born there seemed quite natural. Matthew’s problem was that he then had to find a way to deal with history and with the fact that this baby, though born in Bethlehem, would grow up in Nazareth of Galilee. Luke, who accepts Mark’s frame of reference involving Jesus’ Galilean roots, had the opposite problem. How could it be arranged for a couple who lived in Galilee actually to be in Bethlehem when the child was born? Luke hit upon a scheme that probably has some semblance of history to it and he used it to tell his magnificent story that is familiar to most of us today. There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world was to be enrolled. Was this a census? Was it for the purpose of taxation? Periodically we learn from the Old Testament that the Jews wanted to count their citizens. There are historical hints of a census ordered within a decade after the death of King Herod or around 6 to 7 CE. The idea that an empire-wide census, however, was ever undertaken stretches credibility to the breaking point. There were no records, no birth certificates, no marriage certificates, no death certificates. Travel was hard and slow. Records were stored nowhere. Luke, however, needed to have a hook on which to create his story of the Bethlehem birth of a child whose parents were citizens of Nazareth. So he used the presumed census to account for the fact that Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem. This enrollment, Luke said, occurred when Quirinius was governor of Syria. That was an interesting addition. Luke has already related that the births of John the Baptist and Jesus had occurred when “Herod was the King of Judea.” We know from secular records, however, that Herod died in the year 4 BCE. On the other hand, we know that Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until the winter in which the year 6 CE turned into the year 7 CE. So, if Jesus was born when Herod was king, he would have been ten to eleven years old when this enrollment was ordered. The presumed history behind this birth narrative begins to wobble perceptibly. Next we learn that Joseph, because he was of the house and lineage of David, must, as a pre-requisite of this census, return to his ancestral home to be enrolled. This, Luke asserted, was the key that resulted in a Bethlehem birthplace for Jesus.. Does this mean that all the direct heirs of King David had to make the journey to Bethlehem? David, who according to the Bible had many wives and many concubines, reigned in Judah from the year 1000 to 960 BCE. If we count a generation at 20 years, a rather generous number in a world where life expectancy was only in the thirties, there would be about 48 generations between David and Jesus. If David had only 50 children, a rather small number for a king with a large harem, his direct descendants in 48 generations would be well over a billion people! Suppose it was a fact, as Luke asserts, that all of David’s direct heirs had to return to Bethlehem to be enrolled? It is no wonder there was no room at the inn! Historicity is shattered. One final note, Luke tells us that Joseph had to take Mary with him for this enrollment. Why this was necessary is not stated. In that patriarchal era, women were not enrolled, counted or taxed. They were thought of as property, part of the male’s wealth upon which taxes were paid. If this baby is to be born in Bethlehem, however, Mary, Jesus’ mother, must be in Bethlehem. So Luke tells us that Joseph took her with him even though she “was great with child,” to use the beautiful language of King James’ English. “Great with child” surely means near to term so we can assume that she was in her last month of pregnancy. How many of us have ever stopped to realize that Bethlehem was 94 miles from Nazareth? Do we embrace that the two options for transportation open to them in the first century were walking or riding on a donkey? Do we understand that this was a seven to ten day journey that would have to average nine to twelve miles a day? Are we aware that in this era there were no restaurants or hotels along the way? Now ask yourself, what man in his right mind would take his nine-months pregnant wife on a 94 mile journey on a donkey or actually walking, when the literal reason for taking her does not hold any credibility? It was a Roman Catholic lay theologian, Rosemary Ruether, who after reading this birth narrative in Luke, remarked that “only a man who had never had a baby could have written this story.” Religious art portrays this journey to Bethlehem with Mary riding side saddle on a donkey led by a walking Joseph. That is little more than romantic imagination. In the text there is no donkey. That should not surprise us. In Matthew’s story of the Wise Men, there are no camels. In Luke’s story, there is no stable. There are no animals around the Christ Child in the stable because there is no stable. There is only a feeding trough, called a manger. That feeding trough could be out in the fields as easily as it could be inside a structure. Be aware that pageants and human imagination have created images for us that are in fact not biblical. Luke’s story, however, has achieved its agenda. The Nazareth-based family has managed to be located physically in Bethlehem when the child is born. The messianic connection has been established. Mythology has been enhanced. Luke does two more things that I have mentioned earlier in this series. I repeat them here, because we can see them now in context. He takes a text from the Wisdom of Solomon where the richest of all the Jewish kings says: “When I was born I was carefully swaddled, for there is no other way for a king to come to his people.” So Luke says that they wrapped the babe in swaddling cloths and this clue was given to the shepherds to help them find him. Second, he was placed into a manger, an image Luke borrowed from Isaiah 1. This one faithful Jew, unlike the history of his people in the time of Isaiah, would know from the moment of his birth who was his father and what largesse he received from the God he represented. There are many levels on which the stories of the birth of Jesus can be read. Literalism is not one of them. So we will bring this study of the birth narratives to a conclusion next week. This is rich material, but it is not history and our analysis reveals that it was never understood by the authors of both Matthew and Luke to be history. It is a pity that the Gentiles who became both the majority and the dominant strain in the Christian Church after about 150 CE did not know the Jewish Scriptures well enough to understand what the original stories meant. Literalism is not only an expression of biblical ignorance, but it is a distortion of the gospel so dangerous as to be destructive of Christianity itself.~ John Shelby Spong | | | | Announcements Spiritual Literacy Certificate Programs - 2023 Spirituality & Practice invites you to become part of the inaugural group for two training programs based on the recognition that all of life is a spiritual practice. These programs are for individual seekers, spiritual leaders and companions, caregivers and service providers, and activists in change-making organizations. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Adventures of Joe Biden
by Milan Hamilton 08 Dec '22

08 Dec '22

(I may have sent this from an incorrect Email address. I have too damned many) Sorry Well well well. No matter what you may think of whetheWell well well. No matter what you may think of whether our current President has what it takes to have the job he got elected to, or to run again for the Octogenarian-in-Chief in 2024, you gotta admit the ship of State is a little steadier than when He-who-shall-not-be-named was rocking the boat. This gives me the inspiration to write number 15 in the Adventures of Joe Biden saga (again with a nod to Ogden Nash's Adventures of Isabel): *Adventures of Joe Biden 15* Joe Biden half-way through his first two years Faced the prediction of Red Wave fears; Kevin was licking his chops at the thought Of taking the Speakership, which he’d long sought. Mitch was plotting in hopes they were right, The leadership return was clearly in sight. Joe Biden, he didn’t scream or scurry, He calmly said “What? Me worry? He believed our democracy would see us through And last night, believe it! Georgia’s turning blue! Milan Hamilton December 7, 2022 ReplyReply allForward

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Human Development Zones
by Robertson Work 04 Dec '22

04 Dec '22

Remember our ICA-thinking/work on human development zones? A group of us local residents here in the Swannanoa watershed in western NC are doing something of that sort. As part of the global Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL), our Swannanoa Watershed Action Network (SWAN) is a self-organizing network using chaordic theory and ToP facilitation in promoting social justice and ecological regeneration. Please see our story below. You might join in the fun by starting a local network where you live. Karen Troxel and Jan Sanders had a session on the global archives' events related to DEAL. Holiday good wishes to all! https://doughnuteconomics.org/stories/195 [https://doughnuteconomics.org/rails/active_storage/representations/redirect…]<https://doughnuteconomics.org/stories/195> SwanWater Continues Its Discovery | DEAL<https://doughnuteconomics.org/stories/195> Swannanoa Watershed Action Network (SWAN): When All Thrive, Earth Regenerates (WATER) doughnuteconomics.org Robertson Work Ecological-social activist and nonfiction author Books and bio: https://www.amazon.com/Robertson-Work/e/B075612GBF

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12/01/2022, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers: Holy Envy; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 01 Dec '22

01 Dec '22

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screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv2669403322 #yiv2669403322templateBody .yiv2669403322mcnTextContent, #yiv2669403322 #yiv2669403322templateBody .yiv2669403322mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv2669403322 #yiv2669403322templateFooter .yiv2669403322mcnTextContent, #yiv2669403322 #yiv2669403322templateFooter .yiv2669403322mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} By Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers | | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Holy Envy | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers December 1, 2022For the last six weeks, my congregation in Norman, Oklahoma, has been reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s wonderful book, Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others. In it, she tells the story of teaching Religion 101 (an introduction to world religions) to students at Piedmont College in rural north Georgia. With her customary eloquence, and seen largely through the eyes of her students, she describes the experience of teaching Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam—as well as Christianity—to young people who live in the lower swells of the Appalachians in a two-stoplight town with sixty-two churches. They go to school in what Flannery O’Connor once called “the Christ-haunted South.” There is one Buddhist temple nine miles away, but no synagogues or mosques within an hour’s drive. What she experienced time and time again was what she calls “holy envy.” Referring to herself in the third person, she begins by talking about what teaching the course did to the professor. “When she taught Judaism, she wanted to be a rabbi. When she taught Buddhism, she wanted to be a monk. It was only when she taught Christianity that the fire sputtered because her religion looked so different once she saw it lined up with the others. She always promised her students that studying other faiths would not make them lose their own. Then she lost hers, or at least the one she started out with.” What happens over the course of the semester is described with Taylor’s trademark combination of honesty and tender-heartedness. She wants more than anything for the students to have an experience of seeing God through the eyes of faith traditions they know nothing about by studying those traditions, but also through the experience of field trips—four of them, to be exact. One to a Hindu Temple, one to a Buddhist Monastery, one to a Reformed Jewish Temple, and one to a mosque, all in Atlanta. The real learning happens on those field trips, as the students react in both fear and wonder to the religious diversity that is now impossible to ignore. In my own congregation, we decided to take the very same field trips, and although we are all adults, the experience was transformational. On a balmy October evening, we pulled into the parking lot of the Hindu Temple of Oklahoma City, a fantastically improbable building set in a neighborhood of red brick ranch houses, looking like nothing we had ever seen before. We took off our shoes, and inside was a room full of ornate statues of gods. We were welcomed by a wonderful priest named Dr. Archara Vada. He taught us about Hinduism for an hour and a half and had the most endearing laugh, more like a joyful giggle. “So many gods, so little time,” I quipped as we wandered about, remembering my Church of Christ upbringing where no graven image was ever to be found or tolerated. The deities were voluptuous, some with multiple arms and legs raised in sacred dance. Some gods had fruit offerings nearby, so the priest could offer prasad—a ritual in which food that has been offered to the Lord is now offered back to us. In the church, we call it communion. Dr. Vada explained that Hindus see all these statues as Icons of the Divine, not as idols. There are many routes to God in Hinduism, and people get to pick and choose their path. Christians could learn a lot from the trust and freedom this embodies. Our second field trip wasn’t a trip at all but a Zoom class on the Basics of Buddhism from teachers at the Dharma Center of Oklahoma City. I have a lot of closet Buddhists in my church (and may be one myself). Here is a faith that focuses not on what God can do for us but on what we can do for ourselves to reduce suffering by taking responsibility for the working of our own minds, avoiding ignorance and attachment to impermanent things which will never provide happiness. Instead of belief being essential, as it is in Christianity, belief is optional. What is required is that you walk the way and decide for yourself what is true. Our church begins worship with a Tibetan singing bowl, and I long ago came out as an ordained non-theist. Our dependence on God as a heavenly vending machine has created spiritual infants who are now fiddling while the earth burns. “It’s all in God’s hands,” they say. No, it isn’t. Our third field trip was to the Reformed Jewish Temple in Oklahoma City, where I have enjoyed close friendships with the rabbis for nearly four decades. “A liberal Christian is the best friend a Jew can have outside the faith,” one rabbi said to me. They don’t want to convert us, and we don’t want to convert them. But our relationship with our nearest neighbor, as Dr. Taylor put it, is hard to confront and even more painful to be honest about. Studying Judaism not only makes it possible to understand the Jewish Jesus but also reminds us how far we have come from a religion of Jesus to a religion about Jesus. This not only led to our divorce but to centuries of anti-Semitism that is baked into our gospels and our hymns. I grew up believing that the Jews had simply missed their opportunity to recognize the messiah when he was right in front of them. Now I realize that Jews are not antagonistic about Jesus but have their own list of authoritative scriptures about the Messiah, and Jesus just doesn’t qualify. He was a good teacher and a compassionate human being, but as a messiah (who would restore Jerusalem, rebuild the temple, and usher in a reign of peace), he failed. Throw in the Trinity, and it becomes one of those “irreconcilable differences” that mark all divorces. One God means one God, not three. Our experience in the Temple, however, was wonderful. We were warmly welcomed, taught how to read our worship book from back to front (the Hebrew way), included in the reading and interpretation of the Torah ceremony, and then fed afterward. Listening to the melodic intonations of Hebrew helped us remember that this is what Jesus grew up hearing. We left with Holy Envy. Our last field trip was to the mosque at the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma, where my parishioners met their favorite Imam of all time, Imad Enchassi, chair of Islamic studies at Oklahoma City University and a one-man crusader for correcting misconceptions about Muslims in the deeply red state of Oklahoma. As a child, Imad grew up in Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut and witnessed a massacre by a radical Christian group, even as his favorite teacher was a Catholic nun. “God exposed me to so much hatred and violence so that I could be a voice for love and peace,” he told us. For an hour and a half, he explained our deep connections to Abraham, how Muslims revere Jesus and Mary, but who also understand the story of Hagar and Ismael differently than Jews and Christians. But most of all, he lamented how difficult it is to be Muslim in America since 9/11. Dr. Taylor said this made ordinary Muslims “shadow bearers” for people with no wish or will to explore their own shadows. Her class had visited a mosque on the Friday following 9/11 and heard the Imam explain why those who hijacked the planes exposed the falseness of their claim to being Muslim. Again, the welcome was unconditional, and the sharing was gracious. More Holy Envy. The last “field trip” is to revisit our own churches and try to see them as an outsider might as if sitting in a pew for the very first time. A good teacher should be asking us real questions. How did we really get the collection of sacred writings we call the Bible? Why do two of the gospel writers tells completely different infancy narratives about Jesus, and two tell no birth stories at all? If nothing resembling the canon appeared until the fourth century, then what were early Christians reading? And why does Mark have two endings, one with women running frightened from an empty tomb and another that posits snake handling as a test of faith? Most of all, let’s be honest about how gracious we would be if our Hindu friends, or our Buddhist friends, or our Jewish friends, or our Muslim friends came to visit us. Has the exclusivity of our developed doctrines made it impossible for us to learn from each other, much less accept each other? Why do we think we have the market cornered on God, and why is our view of the sacred so body-averse and so obsessed with sins of the flesh? Most of all, why has our religion made so many of us so judgmental, so tribal, and so violent? Here is my heartfelt suggestion. If you are looking for a way to reset your approach to interfaith studies, may I suggest doing a book study on Holy Envy and then taking the field trips that go with it? It is a transformative experience that will change the way you see the world of faith and your neighbor. Dr. Taylor ends her book with a story about discovering the Church of the Common Ground, which meets in a public park in the heart of downtown Atlanta. They have no building, but their welcome is as wide as the sky. That may be the church of the future if the walls of the old one don’t kill us as they tumble down. Love thy neighbor, and learn from them, but don’t try to convert them. They have too much to teach us.~ Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers Read online here About the Author Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers is pastor of First Congregational Church UCC, Norman, Oklahoma, and retired senior minister of Mayflower Congregational UCC church, Oklahoma City. He is currently a Professor of Public Speaking and Distinguished Professor of Social Justice Emeritus in the Philosophy Department at Oklahoma City University. He is a fellow of the Westar Institute and the author of eight books on religion and American culture, the most recent of which is, Saving God from Religion: A Minister’s Search for Faith in a Skeptical Age. A feature-length documentary chronicles his work on behalf of Progressive Christianity in Oklahoma (americanhereticsthefilm.com) and more information is at RobinMeyers.com. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By A Reader I consider myself a good person and I want to remain a church-going Christian but I find that living a Christ-centered life can be a difficult struggle - is the struggle worth it? A: By Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox Dear Reader,Is the struggle worth it, you ask? I think that life is always a struggle and especially when one commits to including one’s conscience along the way. Jesus never said life was easy, nor did he say, “Blessed are the comfortable.” He did say, “Blessed are those who comfort others” however. As for being a “church going” Christian, it depends very often on what the church or assembly stand for and how they do it. I often find myself somewhat bored going to church—too much reading and being read at, too little silence or simply listening to being and not words. Sometimes I find myself yearning for some silence and meditation but instead I get song after song after song being read from books. One wonders if the liturgists ought not to consider this news Rilke offered us over 100 years ago, “the work of the eyes is finished now. Go and do heart-work on all the images that are imprisoned within you.”More heart work, less eye work. I suspect this is one big reason that many young people avoid church and seek out yoga or other spiritual practices that are body-based and more than reading and eye-based. One yearns for some deeper experience than can occur strictly in the light—for some acknowledgement therefore of mystery and darkness and silence. Of the Apophatic God, the God who is “superessential darkness” (Eckhart) and not just the God of Light.Consider for example these teachings about the value of silence (including group silence):“Nothing in all creation is so like God as Silence.” (Meister Eckhart)“I feel closer to what language cannot reach.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)“Language cannot do everything— chalk it on the walls where the dead poets lie in their mausoleums.” (Adrienne Rich)“O silence, golden zero Unsettling sun Love winter when the plant says nothing.” (Thomas Merton)“This word is a hidden word and comes in the darkness of the night.To enter this darkness, put away all voices and sounds all images and likenesses.For no image has ever reached into the soul’s foundation where God herself with her own being is effective.” (Meister Eckhart)“Yet no matter how deeply I go down into myself my God is dark and like a webbing made of a hundred roots, that drink in silence.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)“In this temple of God in this the divine dwelling place, God alone rejoices with the soul in the deepest silence. There is no reason for the intellect to stir or seek anything, for the Lord who created it wishes to give it repose here.” (Teresa of Avila)I think following Christ is less of a burden when we give silence and nothingness its due. As the Taoists put it:“Tao is beyond words And beyond things It is not expressed Either in word or in silence. Where there is no longer word or silence Tao is apprehended.”Substitute the word “Christ” for Tao and this teaching works equally well. (See Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, pp. 132ff) ~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox Read and share online here About the Author Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 40 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 78 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship (called The Cosmic Mass). His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much-neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. Among his books are A Way To God: Thomas Merton's Creation Spirituality Journey; Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times; Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times; Order of the Sacred Earth; The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times; and Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic – And Beyond; Original Blessing; The Coming of the Cosmic Christ; The Coming of the Cosmic Christ; A Spirituality Named Compassion; Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality. To encourage a passionate response to the news of climate change advancing so rapidly, Fox started DailyMeditationswithMatthewFox.org | | | | | | | | | | | | ProgressiveChristianity.org, the parent company of your Progressing Spirit Newsletter, has been working hard on a new website. Our technology is very out-of-date and we thank you, are readers, for hanging in there with us while we build the new website. Because we are a 501(c)3 non-profit we rely heavily on donations. We underestimated the cost of building the new website and need to raise an additional $15,000 to complete it. Can you donate today, because we can't do it without you! Help ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit stay strong and online with the technology we so desperately need - click here to donate today! | | | | | | | | | | | The Moonshine Jesus Show Don't miss the next Episode of PC.org's Executive Directors Mark and Caleb every Monday at 4:30pm Eastern Time – watch live on Facebook,, YouTube, Twitter, Podbean | | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Part II: Introducing The Fourth Gospel Tales of a Jewish Mystic Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong June 6, 2013When writing the opening chapter of my soon-to-be released book, The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic, I felt the need to issue a warning to my readers. This warning needed to go in two quite different directions. There will certainly be those who think of themselves as “traditionally religious people,” who may well be scandalized by the content of this book. It will present them with ideas about the Bible about which they have never heard. There will also, however, be others, who are what I describe as members of the “Church Alumni Association,” those who have long ago given up on organized or institutional religion, who might actually be intrigued to hear a gospel being talked about in a different way. They might be fascinated to learn of the actual origins of the Fourth Gospel. This gospel was certainly not thought of as “the literal word of God” by its primary authors. I say “authors and editors” because this gospel was not ever a single volume that dropped from heaven in a completed form and divided into chapters and verses, as most church teaching has suggested over the centuries. Scholars now believe the Fourth Gospel was written in layers over a period of close to 30 years and by more than one primary person. The academic debate is not about whether there were multiple authors, that is assumed, but about how many there were. In this volume, I will identify only three Johannine layers or primary editorial revisions. If there were more than three, and no less a person than Raymond Brown argues for five, then some of them would have had to have been in the oral period rather than additional written sources and, as such, are much more difficult to isolate. Allow me to sketch the three layers I can identify briefly. The earliest written layer of this gospel appears to date from the mid 70’s, which makes it a near contemporary to Mark. It reflects the shaping influence of the life of the synagogue on the community’s memory of Jesus. It recognizes that the Christian faith was born as a movement within the synagogue and thus is deeply and consistently Jewish in its frame of reference. In this strand of John’s text, we can see, feel and experience in its background, the high holy days of the Jewish liturgical year. Here we touch what might be called “primitive Christianity” as the disciples of Jesus, all of whom were Jews, sought to incorporate Jesus of Nazareth into the faith of their fathers and mothers. That was a process that had happened many times in the past as Judaism grew and developed. The fact is that in the Jewish experience, one prophet after another from Isaiah and Micah to Amos and Zechariah had been added into the Canon of the Jewish Sacred Scriptures. Judaism was an expanding not a static religious system. Jesus’ followers believed that he had brought to Judaism something new and fresh, but nonetheless, something consistent with their ongoing faith story. That incorporation of Jesus into Judaism is seen in this layer of the Fourth Gospel primarily in the way that they sought to show him as the fulfillment of the expectations of the “law and the prophets,” or indeed, as “that prophet of whom Moses spoke.” At its earliest level, the Fourth Gospel was and is a profoundly Jewish book. The second editorial layer that has been discovered in this book seems to date from the mid to late 80’s of the Common Era. This was a time in the history of the Christian movement of exacerbating tensions between the followers of Jesus, who came to be called “Revisionists” and the leaders of the synagogue, who called themselves the “Orthodox” or right-thinking party. This growing negativity ultimately resulted in a fracture when the orthodox leaders excommunicated the followers of Jesus from the synagogue. This occurred around the year 88 of the Common Era. In a major revision of this gospel that occurred at this time, we see rising hostility and elements of what we now call anti-Semitism clearly creep into the text. Hostile words pass between the two groups. The Johannine text begins to call the enemies of Jesus simply “the Jews.” Those using this term pejoratively were, interestingly enough, also Jews. They meant the “Orthodox” party, whom they perceived as the enemies of those who follow Jesus. Before the split, the two groups had been engaged in what each thought was a battle to determine the true direction that Judaism was being called to travel. They were struggling with each other, as it were, for the “soul” and the future of Judaism.” The third major editorial revision that is clearly visible in this gospel comes after the reality of this excommunication began to set in. This would place it in the mid 90’s. Up until this time, the whole thrust of those Jews, who were followers of Jesus, was to portray him as the fulfillment of the hopes of the Jews, based on the messianic scriptural images. He was a new and expanded version of such Jewish heroes as Moses, Samuel, Elijah and the Servant figure of II Isaiah. Now, however, they had been cast out of that Jewish context and they had to rethink their understanding of Jesus, for loyalty to Jesus had carried them beyond the boundaries of Judaism. This freed them to look at him in a new context, perhaps a post-Jewish context; the boundaries of Judaism no longer restrained them. This was the time when, as I shall seek to demonstrate, they began to define Jesus according to the thinking of the 1st century school of thought known as “Merkabah or Jewish throne mysticism.” This mystical approach was still related to the faith of the fathers and mothers, but it was free of all “limits and all boundaries.” Mysticism always transcends the barriers that religion creates and presses its adherents toward a universalistic understanding. This was the time when, under the guidance of this form of Jewish mysticism, the next major editor of the Johannine text began to speak of Jesus’ “oneness with God.” I am now convinced that this editor never intended the words he chose to use in this revision would ever to be read or understood in terms of the language of “incarnation.” That was a fourth century idea that would later be imposed on this gospel by the likes of Athanasius and the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. He certainly was not writing an apologia for Jesus as the “second person of the Holy Trinity.” His words, however, did open this gospel to these possible interpretations and, following the development of the creeds at Nicaea and beyond, this theology was attached to the Fourth Gospel so firmly that it is still the primary lens through which the gospel of John is read today. So the oneness with God, found in Jewish mysticism in the first century, came to be understood as the external deity invading the flesh of human life. It was in this final editorial revision I am now convinced that we begin to get the language in the Fourth Gospel that has Jesus say: “I and the Father are one” or “if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” This is also when the holy name of God, “I AM,” began to be placed on to the lips of Jesus and the “I AM” statements became part of the gospel: “I am the bread of life;” I am the “living water,” I am “the gate,” the “vine,” the “good shepherd,” the “way,” the “resurrection” and the “life.” This is also, I now believe, when the prologue identifying Jesus with the “word of God” spoken in creation, was added to the text of John. In that prologue the suggestion was made that the “word of God” met in Jesus was preexistent and had been part of God since the foundation of the world. The Jews felt the same way about the “wisdom” of God and the prologue to John is based on a hymn to wisdom found in the book of Proverbs. Under the skillful quill of this third major editor, the mysterious presence of God in the life of Jesus was given a new form. This mystical oneness also signaled for its Jewish readers that this book was never intended by its author to be read or understood literally and, indeed, would never lend itself to a literal understanding. The clear idea that this gospel was never to be read as if it were literally true will be the source of the scandal that traditionally religious people will feel as they read these pages. That will, however, also be the source of the “intrigue” that those who have stepped outside all formal religious structures might feel as they realize that the Christianity that they have rejected is not at all what Christianity was intended to be. So, in my opening chapter, I outlined some of the things that would produce these dual responses, of both scandal and intrigue. Readers who might be in either of these groups will discover in this book such sentence as these: “In all probability, none of the sayings attributed to Jesus in this gospel were ever spoken by him,” that “none of the miracles called “signs” and attributed to Jesus in this gospel, ever actually happened,” that “most of the characters who populate the pages of this gospel are literary or fictionalized creations of the author and were never real people who actually lived,” and “that the language of an external deity entering into the flesh of our physical existence, which shapes the way most people still inform both their understanding of Christianity and the way they read this gospel is not even close to what the writers of this gospel intended.” So reading this book will be for some people an adventure leading to a radically new understanding of Christianity, while for others it will be a blasphemous book that constitutes an absolute attempt to destroy what they mistakenly believe to be “biblical truth.” I will live with both responses. For me it is the result of years of study and it represents an honest attempt to discover the essential Christian understanding, which has for centuries been smothered under the presumed authority of creeds, which are in turn under-girded by either the unbelievable claims of an inerrant Bible or the distorted infallibility claims of an inflexible church hierarchy. While surely some will call this book an attack on Christianity itself, I call it an attempt to rescue the Christ experience from the increasingly dated and unbelievable explanations that through the ages we have wrapped around Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, I see this book as an essential building block in the development of what I have called “A New Christianity for a New World.”~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements The Christmas Stories: Celebrating, Questioning, & Explaining the Biblical Narratives A 4 Week Exploration of the Christmas Stories with John Dominic Crossan December 2022 READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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2022 ICA USA Highlights
by Karen Snyder 29 Nov '22

29 Nov '22

ICA USA has been posting highlights of 2022 on Facebook and Instagram. Visit https://www.facebook.com/icausaorg to get an update.

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Prof Timothy Snyder's lectures on Ukraine are available on YouTube
by David Dunn 25 Nov '22

25 Nov '22

Hi everyone. I suspect that many of you already know of the Yale professor of history, Timothy Snyder and his lectures about “The Making of Modern Ukraine" on YouTube. A month or so ago, Burna and I stumbled onto one of his 50-minute lectures. We’ve been closely following this series and other presentations he’s been making over the past five+ years. We've been surprised and thrilled. He is a great lecturer, has vast knowledge as a historian with especially close ties to Ukraine, Poland and other countries in Europe and deep historical familiarity with the relationship between Ukraine and Russia. He’s multilingual and has been in touch with President Zelensky recently. Long before the beginning of the war Russia precipitated last February, Snyder had been relentlessly working to expand the context of European history and this conflict in particular. Just search for Timothy Snyder and you’ll see the multiple talks he’s given. For a fine intro, I'd recommend the keynote talk at the Davos 2022 conference last May. It's a very fine talk and a good taste of Prof. Snyder's speaking style and message, A screen shot and the URL for the YouTube video are below. It love to hear who else is following him or has listened to one or more of his talks. David — dmdunn1(a)gmail.com 720-314-5991 https://youtu.be/FC-Eu-THPCo — David Dunn 740 S Alton Way 9B Denver, CO 80247 -- dmdunn1(a)gmail.com 720-314-5991

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11/24/2022, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox: In Praise of Thanks; Spong revisited
by Ellie Stock 24 Nov '22

24 Nov '22

| | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In Praise of Thanks | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox November 24, 2022 Thanksgiving 2022. There is much to be grateful for; and much to be concerned about. The latter includes global warming and the end of the Earth as humanity has known it for the past 200,000 years of our existence. GOP22 is testimony to that fact as are the rising seas, the record-smashing heat waves (China included), the dried up rivers from the Danube to the Rhine to the Thames in Europe to the Colorado River and Mississippi River in North America and the Yangtze River in China, called the “most important river in China.” The melting of glaciers provides water for much of Asia and Africa and more. The diminishment of the world’s forests and rainforests, soil and waters. The heating and acidification of the oceans will forever empty the ocean of many of its living creatures. And so much more. How many more facts have to come out for humanity to wake up from its “narcissism” (Pope Francis’ appropriate word) and come to its own rescue, drop its insane wars and military budgets, and get to the common task of saving the planet for our own and others species survival? I propose that a new revolution of thankfulness is the best ‘weapon’ humans possess to bring about this wake up in the midst of emergency. If we borrow the physics of old, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and add Spirit to it, we have a chance at survival. If we don’t, our time is very much limited on this planet. Thanks and Gratitude are the bottom line energies we need today. Thanks for Earth and its generous hospitality that has welcomed our species, fed it, nurtured it, delighted it, amazed it, and made our existence possible and beautiful. She is our Mother as all the great mystics of old from Hildegard of Bingen to Francis of Assisi to Julian of Norwich know and indigenous peoples know well. And that She deserves our praise and our thanks and our eagerness to imitate her and make healing happen. Thanks for the Air we breathe and can no longer take for granted. For the healthiness of it, for the miracle of it, breath in/breath out. For how our lungs are perfectly in tune with the special combination of oxygen and the rest, the miracle that we call Air. Science tells us that the 4 mile thick cover of air that surrounds the earth is proportionately less than the thickness of the apple skin is to the apple. Beyond that four mile distance airlessness reigns. Thanks for Fire, the Sun and the warmth and light it offers us for free every day. And the photosynthesis that brings us the food we all eat because it is the food all plants and animals eat. The fire that ignites our souls as well as warms and nurtures our bodies and that many peoples, including those of the Bible tradition, have honored as a symbol of Spirit, Divinity, God or Love. “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy faithful and enkindle in them the fire of thy love.” Fire is at the forefront of our survival and interest today because that is what constitutes an “energy crisis.” How do we get our fire? From dead plants and animals of millions of years ago that we know as oil and coal and fossil fuels? We are being asked to change our ways of fire drastically today if we are to survive. We need to fall in love with Fire anew other than the fire (energy) of fossil fuels--other kinds of fire such as sunlight and wind and waves. We are in a “fire crisis” insofar as we find ourselves in an “energy crisis.” If we are truly grateful for Fire we will choose wisely. Thanks to those efforts by world leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists and citizens who are demonstrating and demanding new ways to employ fire. Ways that take us beyond burning trees and forests, coal and oil. Fire’s dangerous side is apparent in the wildfires so devastating the Western United States at this time but also happening around the world and especially in Africa. Another wake up call to tame Fire. Fire is masculine or yang energy. So a revolution in fire consciousness is another expression of our need to move beyond excessive patriarchal or toxic masculinity to a healthier version of fire and energy, one that nurtures generations to come with care and concern and sustainability. More Yin energy. Thanks for Water. Who can live without water? Not just for our drinking, cooking, cooling and cleaning but also for the aesthetic of it, the beauty of it to be found in soothing lakes and rapid rivers and mysterious oceans and awesome waterfalls and gentle rains and wild thunderstorms. We are a blue planet after all, thanks to the waters. Buck Ghosthorse, a Lakota teacher, faculty member and friend once said to me, “Do you want to know how sacred water is? Go without it for three days.” The increased droughts in dry places and floods and hurricanes in wet places is a sign of our times. And of global warming. Water too has its dark and dangerous side. A fireman once told me that water is more dangerous than fire. Water is Yin energy, feminine energy. Here too we can see that too much water on the one hand, or too little on the other, speaks to us of the proper balance we all need, Mother Earth needs, for harmony and peace and survival. Yin and Yang in balance, Water and Fire in balance. The sacred and healthy masculine and the divine feminine in balance. There lies our survival. Thanks for Earth, Air, Fire, Water: There lies the political and spiritual and survival agenda for our species today. We are staring extinction in the face. Let us return to Thanks. And then act on that thanks. French playwright Antonin Artaud speaks a stark truth when he says that “It is good that from time to time cataclysms occur that compel us to return to nature, i.e., to rediscover life.”[i] Our current extinction emergency is forcing us to return to nature and to basics. Thanksgiving is basic. Thanks for existence and therefore creation or nature is basic. How basic? Listen to these creation mystics: Thomas Aquinas: “Religion is supreme thankfulness and gratitude.”[ii] Notice how for Aquinas thanks is the very essence of religion—not hierarchy, not church buildings, not commandments, not redemption, not escaping hell or grabbing at heaven--but gratitude. Indeed, supreme gratitude. And this is the very meaning of worship and of the Sabbath. As Aquinas puts it, “of all the divine gifts to be commemorated, the first and foremost was that of the Creation, which was called to mind by the sanctification of the sabbath.... The sanctification of the Sabbath [is] in memory of the creation of all things.”[iii] And of course the very meaning of Christian worship, called Eucharist, is “to give thanks.” Can the move away from Religion to Spirituality today be a move toward Thankfulness and Gratitude as the bottom line for prayer and authentic religion? The beginning point for an authentic and deep mystical/prophetic journey? The Via Positiva as a springboard to Justice and Compassion and therefore survival? Meister Eckhart tells us that “if the only prayer you say in your whole life is ‘Thank you,’ that would suffice.” This seems to be a stripped down version of what Aquinas teaches above. Julian of Norwich: “This is the holiest prayer—the prayer of thanksgiving.” Such thanksgiving leads to actions. As she puts it, “charged with the quality of reverence and loving awe, we turn ourselves with all our might toward the actions” to which we are guided.[iv] The great psychologist Otto Rank, only now being given credit for being the father of humanistic psychology including his influence on Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Rollo May, defines the artist as “one who wants to leave behind a gift.” Of course, among indigenous peoples, everyone is an artist and this is surely at the heart of the biblical teaching that we are all made in the image and likeness of the Creator. We are all “co-creators” and in this Aquinas says lies the deepest meaning of our being called “images of God.” He writes: “Although a created being tends to the divine likeness in many ways, this one whereby it seeks the divine likeness by being the cause of others takes the ultimate place. Hence Dionysius says, that ‘of all things, it is more divine to become a co-worker with God’ in accord with the statement of the Apostle: ‘we are God’s co-workers’ (1 Cor. 3:9).”[v] Isn’t the desire to “leave behind a gift” itself an act of thanksgiving? We all leave this embodiment of ourselves on Earth. Few know the time or place, but we do know we are mortal and therefore exiting. Thus we yearn to leave behind a gift. Gift for gift. Our Thank You for our having visited this place. Our thank you for our existence. Let us praise all those who want to leave behind a gift. Let us praise thanks and our capacity for thanks. Thanks is the opposite of Taking for Granted. Let us all cease taking for granted. That includes taking for granted Earth, Air, Fire and Water. And Spirit. ~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox Read online here About the Author Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 40 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 78 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship (called The Cosmic Mass). His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much-neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. Among his books are A Way To God: Thomas Merton's Creation Spirituality Journey; Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times; Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times; Order of the Sacred Earth; The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times; and Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic – And Beyond; Original Blessing; The Coming of the Cosmic Christ; Stations of the Cosmic Christ; A Spirituality Named Compassion. To encourage a passionate response to the news of climate change advancing so rapidly, Fox started DailyMeditationswithMatthewFox.org [i] See Matthew Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest, p. 302. [ii] Matthew Fox, The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times, pp. 41-44. [iii] See Matthew Fox, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, p. 177. [iv] Matthew Fox, Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond, pp. 101f. [v] Fox, Sheer Joy, p. 245. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By A Reader I am feeling concerned that life may not really matter and question whether my own life has a deeper meaning and will make any real difference in the world. A: By Brian D. McLaren Dear Reader, As I read your brief note, I feel both the personal pain that is unique to you and your situation, and the more general anxiety that resonates so deeply with universal human condition. The most sensitive and reflective among us, those with the highest ideals, seem to feel most acutely the gap between their hopeful dreams and actual reality. And all of us, or nearly all of us, reach low points where it feels that we have ruined our lives and squandered opportunities. I can’t help but wonder how old you are, because this question has one kind of poignancy among the young who have uncertain years stretched out ahead of them, another among the middle aged whose candle seems half-gone, and another among the elders who look back and wonder what has actually been accomplished after years of effort. Through my many years as a Christian, I have come to see more clearly something that was incredibly obvious in the New Testament, but that I had been trained, it seems, to not see. A friend of mine captured it after a super difficult period of life, when he said, “Life is a gift and love is the point.” In Paul’s writings, he puts it both negatively and positively. Negatively (1 Corinthians 13), he tells us that our greatest successes in life — without love — are meaningless. In place of a coherent melody, there is only a hollow noise. Positively (Galatians 5:6), he tells that many things are indeed meaningless, including issues religious people argue about fervently. The only thing that matters, he says, is faith expressing itself through love. So here is what I would encourage you, or anyone wondering about the meaning of their life, to do. First, think back on the people who have loved you — family, friends, teachers, colleagues, even strangers who have shown you kindness and respect. See yourself as a person who has been loved. Second, think about the love and generosity that have come to you from other living creatures, even the earth itself… from a cat curling in your lap or a dog wagging his tail to greet you, from the rains and soil, from a ripe summer peach or a plump spring strawberry or a crisp autumn apple, from beauty shining in a shimmering field of wheat or in a frosty window on a winter’s morning. Allow yourself to feel that you were given the gift of life, full of generous gifts like these. Third, think about the love you have shown… the people you have cared about, the causes you have been committed to, the work you have done to benefit others. Then, perhaps you could reflect upon these words from the New Testament (1 John 4:7-8): “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God… because God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God lives in that person.” If we listen to the voice of the Spirit whispering up from deep within us, I think we will hear something like this: the measure of a meaningful life is love… receiving love, sharing love. Even if we lived a hateful life up until this moment, there is good news: the smallest gesture of love that we indulge in today, from giving a cup of cold water to someone in need to sharing a kind word or smile, will not be meaningless. It will mark the turning of our lives toward the light. Please know that my heart, and the hearts of so many people reading your note, are rising up in love for you today. Your honesty and desire for meaning have stirred up more love in the world today, and that makes a difference. ~ Brian D. McLaren Read and share online here About the Author Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. A former college English teacher and pastor, he is an Auburn Senior Fellow and a leader in the Convergence Network, through which he is developing an innovative training/mentoring program for pastors, church planters, and lay leaders called Convergence Leadership Project. He works closely with the Center for Progressive Renewal/Convergence, the Wild Goose Festival and the Fair Food Program‘s Faith Working Group. His most recent book is Faith After Doubt. He is the author of the illustrated children’s book (for all ages) called Cory and the Seventh Story, The Great Spiritual Migration, We Make the Road by Walking, and Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? And his newest book, Do I Stay Christian?. | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | From all of your friends at ProgressiveChristianity.org we wish to extend to you and your family a blessed and Happy Thanksgiving! This is the time of year we need to call on our annual donors to step forward. We need to raise 30% of our annual budget during the last few weeks of the year. Please give, if you can, your gift will ensure that Progressive Christianity.org will continue the work of providing progressive Christian Resources and Tools for individuals and churches for the coming year. If you are looking for the best way to help us become a sustaining supporter by choosing Recurring Donation. | | | | | | | | | | | Don't miss the next Episode of PC.org's Executive Directors Mark and Caleb on: The Moonshine Jesus Show - every Monday at 4:30pm Eastern Time – watch live on Facebook,, YouTube, Twitter, Podbean | | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited Part I: The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong May 30, 2013 I think it is fair to say that I could not have written this book 25 years ago. For most of my career, I was almost repelled by the Fourth Gospel. It seemed to me to portray Jesus with his humanity no longer intact. In this gospel, he does not appear to suffer. There is no sense of the Jesus who was portrayed in the synoptic gospels as apprehensive in anticipation of his death. John’s Jesus never prays that “this cup might pass from me.” Indeed, he actually rejects that idea with the statement, “It was to drink this cup that I was born!” The Fourth Gospel relates to the cross of Jesus, not as a place of suffering, but as the place where Jesus is to be glorified. From John’s cross the cry of dereliction (“My God, why have you forsaken me?”) has disappeared and has been replaced by the triumphant assertion, “It is finished!” Jesus is informing God that the work “Thou hast given me to do” has been successfully completed. John’s Jesus appears to have no human limits. This gospel seems to claim for him a pre-existent status. “Before Abraham was, I am!” he is made to say and “Moses rejoiced to see my day.” This gospel has God designate Jesus as the son of God not at the resurrection, as Paul appears to do (Romans 1:1-4) or at the baptism by John the Baptist as Mark appears to do or even at the miracle of the virgin birth as both Matthew and Luke appear to do. John’s Jesus was, according to the prologue, the son of God from the dawn of creation. He was “the Word of God” that said “Let there be light” and thus called the world into being. That same “Word of God” simply became flesh in human history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. One cannot, however, be fully human and at the same time be a part of who God is since the beginning of time. The Jesus of John’s gospel seemed to me to be related to God in the same way that Clark Kent was related to Superman. Clark Kent was not really a newspaper reporter, he was Superman in disguise. The Jesus of John’s gospel does not appear to be a real human being; he is God in disguise. In this gospel, Jesus was made to say such things as “The Father and I are one” and, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” To affirm this divine status the author of this book has taken the name of God, “I AM,” out of the story of Moses and the burning bush and has placed it into the mouth of the Jesus of history. So Jesus is made to identify himself with the God “I AM” over and over again in the Johannine text. “I AM the bread of life,” “I AM living water,” “I AM the door,” “I AM the way, the truth and the life,” “I Am the vine,” “I AM the good shepherd” and “I AM the resurrection.” Jesus is also made to claim that he alone is the only way to God and that only when he is lifted up (on the cross) will that “I AM” presence be revealed. Only in that picture of the dying Jesus on the cross will the world see God. Since I could find no way to relate to this non-human Jesus I tended to hope that portrait would go away. The Fourth Gospel has also, in my opinion, served to feed the anti-Semitism that has stained Christian history through the ages. From the Fourth Gospel it appeared to spread through the church fathers (there were no mothers) culminating in the horrifying genocidal outburst in the 20th century that we know as “The Holocaust.” There are times when this gospel seems to spit the words “the Jews” out of its author’s mouth with contempt. This gospel is the only place in the Bible where Jesus is quoted as calling the Jews “the children of the devil.” Those were some of the reasons I was never drawn to this book and why attempting to study it deeply was not something I would have chosen to do at an earlier part of my life. There was one other reason for this negativity that comes out of Christian history. The Fourth Gospel was installed at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE as the ultimate and final arbiter of what came to be called “Christian orthodoxy.” In that council, the battle not only for the soul, but also for the future of Christianity, was fought out under the watchful eye of the Emperor Constantine, who wanted unified Christianity to be a unifying force in his empire. In that defining debate, the chief protagonists were a priest named Arius and a deacon, soon to be a priest and later a bishop, named Athanasius. The content of this battle was over the nature of Jesus, that is, was he of “like substance” or “identical substance” with God? Arius, using quotations from all four of the gospels, argued passionately that Jesus was of “like substance” with God. Athanasius, quoting only the Fourth Gospel as his authority, argued that Jesus was of “identical substance” with God. When the smoke of the battle cleared, Athanasius was declared the winner and the Nicene Creed was adopted, sealing Athanasius’ victory with these words describing Jesus: He was “the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father.” This creed closed every loophole used in the debate with Arius and magnified Jesus’ divinity to the exclusion of his humanity. It also opened the door to what became the defining doctrines that we call “Incarnation” and “Holy Trinity,” which were not fully developed until the 5th century. This Fourth Gospel-supported definition became the substance of Christian orthodoxy. In time this definition of Jesus led to religious wars, religious persecutions, heresy trials, the Inquisition and the condemnation of anyone who dared to think outside the box. Thus this gospel came to be associated with everything that repelled me about Christianity and so it had little appeal. That is why I did not have any interest in studying it much less trying to write about it earlier. Well, things change and my latest book on the Fourth Gospel will soon be in bookstores and a new debate of John, I hope, will ensue. How did that change occur? It took two steps. First, I discovered that the Fourth Gospel had been misread for centuries; that it is a deeply and passionately Jewish book. That insight was initiated when I discovered only a dozen or so years ago, a book written in the 1960’s by an English scholar named Eileen Guilding, herself the academic child of two gigantic New Testament scholars, F.F. Bruce and Austin Farrer. It was as if I had just found a long lost key. Guilding’s book was entitled The Fourth Gospel and Jewish Worship. I realized then that the Johannine community, which had produced this gospel, was itself a profoundly Jewish community so that when they battled those they called “the Jews,” it was an intra-synagogue conflict between Jews and Jews, one group called “Revisionist Jews” and the other “Orthodox Jews.” Then I searched this gospel for its Jewish base and only when I discovered this could I feel the Jewish pain of their being excommunicated from the synagogue by the Orthodox party, an event that occurred around the year 88 CE. The words expressing this pain were later used in the text of this gospel to castigate all Jews, for these texts were quoted throughout the centuries with no sense of their historical context. The second step came when I realized that only when the members of the Johannine community found themselves outside the synagogue did they begin to place their Christ experience into a more universal language than the one they had known while still a part of the synagogue. This was when they turned to a form of first century Jewish mysticism to find a new vocabulary inside which they could express their faith. Jewish mysticism, like mysticism everywhere, understands the limits that words possess. To talk about their transcendent understanding of Christ, they stretched the words they used to the breaking point to make them big enough to capture the Jesus they had experienced as the mystery and the presence of the Ultimate, which they called God. So they painted Jesus in mystical language, not designed to be literalized. Literal words can never carry mystical meaning without being distorted. They then turned what had once been called “miracles” into what this gospel would call “signs.” “Signs” pointed to a reality they could never capture. Thus I discovered that the language of the Fourth Gospel is not the language of the orthodox understanding of incarnation. It is the language of Jewish mysticism. It does not lend itself to creedal formulas or doctrinal debates, but to the processing of mystical experiences. Armed with this gospel’s original Jewishness, recognizing the pain of separation that the Johannine community felt when Orthodox Judaism could not stretch to include them and finally recognizing that what they did was to turn to the inclusive, unlimited vocabulary of Jewish mysticism in order to record their experience of Jesus, I then went back to the Fourth Gospel to read it anew. It was not the same book that once repelled me. Indeed, it captured me as no other book has done before and I devoured it until I was transformed by it. Only then could I write the words that appear in this book’s preface: “Part of my task in this book is to pull anti-Semitism out of Christian history and to pull creedal orthodoxy out of Christianity. I now find this gospel not to be about religion or sin and salvation, but to be about life, expanded life and expanded consciousness. I believe that the Fourth Gospel, properly understood, will lead Christianity into an entirely different direction from the one traditional Christian teaching has followed from Nicaea to this day.” It is now for me a blueprint for a new Christianity for a new world. ~ John Shelby Spong Click here to purchase The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic | | | | | | | | Announcements Answer the Call for an Uncommon Life Through the Mystical Teachings of St. Hildegard A Comprehensive Two-Course Journey to Inspire Putting Your Spirituality Into Action 12th-century mystic and visionary Hildegard of Bingen was a brash and brilliant medieval abbess who rebelled fearlessly against the patriarchy of church and society. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Re: [Oe List ...] Completed Life of Meg Tippett
by jonzondo＠juno.com 22 Nov '22

22 Nov '22

I am lighting a candle for Meg and family.And I will be singing an honoring song with my drum later today.Much love to you all.We are all connected.Jon Mark Elizondo ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Lynda C via OE <oe(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> To: OE List <OE(a)lists.wedgeblade.net> Cc: Lynda C <lynda860(a)outlook.com> Subject: [Oe List ...] Completed Life of Meg Tippett Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2022 01:47:42 +0000 From: Lynda Cock <lynda860(a)outlook.com> Date: Sunday, November 13, 2022 at 3:00 PM To: ICA Directory <movementdir(a)aol.com> Subject: Meg Tippett Many of you on this list have assisted with Meg’s physical care and support after her tragic accident over 37 years ago. To those new to the list, she was one of our youth in the Emerging Generation, along with sisters Brook and Kit. You may also know Mike as The Directory Man, who keeps us all connected. With Mike’s permission, I am posting again the letter below from The Tippett family on our OE list serve as we join with them in care and prayers and resources in support of daughter/sister Meg’s expenses. The family may be contacted at their new address with daughter Kit and husband Jimmy Lee in Maryland. 2200 Wetherburne Way Frederick, MD 21702 Mbtippettt2(a)aol.com 941-713-8626 With care for this family, we celebrate the completed life of Meg Tippett and her courageous and care-filled journey, Lynda and John Cock From: ICA Directory <movementdir(a)aol.com> Reply-To: ICA Directory <movementdir(a)aol.com> Date: Saturday, November 12, 2022 at 10:03 PM To: Lynda Cock <lynda860(a)outlook.com> Subject: Meg Tippett Dear Lynda and John: This is what we've been sending out: Dearest Family and Friends: RE: Update on Meg Tippett First, let us apologize for the mass email. We would love to speak with each of you individually, and welcome that opportunity, but wanted to get out the basics to everyone at once. Last Monday (10/24) Meg was taken to the emergency room at Frederick Health Hospital because she was having difficulty breathing. As Mike was in Chicago visiting daughter Brooke and husband Keith, Kit and husband Jimmy met Meg at the ER. There were many attempts to determine the cause of Meg’s distress and many tests were run. Despite all efforts, Meg continued to be in terrible distress and the Doctors were unable to get her breathing under control, so she was placed on a ventilator and admitted to the ICU. Mike came home Tuesday and Brooke arrived in Maryland on Friday. After six days in the ICU and attempts to stabilize her breathing, Meg was taken off the ventilator and moved to the hospice unit in the hospital. Tuesday (11/1) morning she was moved to a lovely hospice facility in Frederick where she will be kept comfortable as she passes. Under Mike and Judith's care, along with wonderful caregivers, especially our beloved Dawn, and with encouragement from so many of you, Meg thrived and while we will mourn her loss, we can be comforted knowing that she had the best life possible. With so much love and gratitude, Mike, Kit and Brooke and the rest of our family.

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