Progressive Christianity of Gigs Harbor, Washington, United States "Weekly Recap" for Tuesday, 19 May 2015
Do you need help forming a local group to address climate change? Read "Climate Change and Faith Curriculum". Thank you for your support and interest!
Last Week At ProgressiveChristianity.org...
We delved into the topics of Praise God, Climate Change, Progressive Christianity and Peace of Mind.
Visit our website to join in on the discussion and to view our thousands of spiritual resources!
ProgressiveChristianity.org is a global portal for authors, scholars, theologians and liturgists to share their resources for the progressive spiritual journey. Each week we will send you a recap of some of our new resources and each month you will receive an e-newsletter - our eBulletin- which are always full of articles, reviews, liturgies, events, videos, books, news and more! We are glad you are a part of this community!
We Praise You, God of AllJim Burklo
We praise you, God, with rousing song, we answer at your call
Your Word creates the universe, We praise you, God of all
Your Word creates the universe, We praise you, God of all
Your Word creates the universe, We praise you, God of all
Your Word creates the universe, We praise you, God of all
Your Christ appears among us now and gathers one and all
In one community of love, We praise you, God of all
In one community of love, We praise you, God of all
In birth and death, in joy and grief, you hear us as we call
In every language, every faith, We praise you, God of all
In every language, every faith, We praise you, God of all
With all our breath and strength we sing around this earthen ball
To be at one with you again, We praise you, God of all
To be at one with you again, We praise you, God of all
[Tune: “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”, Coronation C.M.]
Climate Change and Faith CurriculumProgressiveChristianity.org
A Partner Organization of ours, Progressive Christians Uniting, created this excellent curriculum to help people grow in their communities to care for the earth both personally and socially. These resources are for small group formation.
Check out our new “Go Green” action item under Resources on our Home Page for more tips and info on climate change.
A Partner Organization of ours, Progressive Christians Uniting, created this excellent curriculum to help people grow in their communities to care for the earth both personally and socially. These resources are for small group formation. Thank you friends at PCU for sharing!
Check out our new “Go Green” action item under Resources on the home page for more tips and info on climate change.
Downloadable Material
Testimonials:
“Prior to joining the Climate Change & Faith group, the only exposure I had to the subject was in grade school where we were told reduce, reuse, recycle! The small group helped me better understand that climate change is a reality, it is something that we cannot ignore, it is something that as a believer in Jesus I need to care about, and that faith and action in helping prevent climate change go hand in hand.”- Meagan
“Our household now has much less waste in our trash and recycling bins each week and we are more conscious of our consumption habits. We are also using the Metro train as much as possible for travel within the LA area. Easy changes – positive impact!” – Bettie
Progressive Christianity: Fact or Fiction
Eric Alexander
Under the cover of darkness Monday night, the progressive Christian movement received a strong endorsement. The endorsement was a well funded and concerted smear campaign launched against it; and it was acknowledgement that the progressive movement is indeed progressing.
Under the cover of darkness Monday night, the progressive Christian movement received a strong endorsement. The endorsement was a well funded and concerted smear campaign launched against it; and it was acknowledgement that the progressive movement is indeed progressing.
I awoke on Tuesday morning to a facebook post by Diana Butler Bass sharing pictures from friend David Felten, co-founder of Living the Questions and Sr. Pastor of The Fountains United Methodist Church. He had taken some pictures (shown above and below) of a highly coordinated campaign by eight conservative evangelical churches in Arizona that kicked off the night before to debunk progressive Christianity. In response to the news some progressive Christians were upset. Some were scared. As for me, I was excited!
When I saw the above image, my eyes saw a sign that read, “Freedom to Think for Oneself: Right or Wrong?” Having been a church insider for a time I know quite well that the greatest perceived danger to many conservative evangelical church leaders is the idea that their congregants begin to embrace questioning and free thought. They are very threatened by this concept, and rightfully so if their goal is fundamental orthodoxy above all else.
In the 300’s CE, the first action that Emperor Constantine and his newly formed Church leadership structure took was to go out and eradicate – by force when necessary – any Christian thought that did not conform to the creeds they had articulated. Free thought impacted their power and control, both physically and spiritually. This went on for over a thousand years thereafter; and that mentality continues to this day.
But facts and intellect cannot be squelched forever. With the help of the internet age, and a host of contemporary scholars, it has become clear that the Bible is not inerrant, and that God is not a war mongering, anti-gay, evolution and climate change denying, bearded man floating in the clouds of a six thousand year old universe.
The group of churches is also coordinating a six part series to reinforce some ideas which fundamentalist Christians continue to hold dear, such as the virgin birth of Jesus. My view is that if Paul, the most devoted evangelist of Jesus; Peter, the best friend of Jesus; James, the brother of Jesus; and Jesus himself never once mentioned the virgin birth, that it is indeed probably a myth and not worth squabbling over its historicity. But this group of church leaders disagrees and is devoting an entire Sunday to preaching about it in a sermon titled “Why Does It Matter That Jesus Was Born of a Virgin.”
When I asked David Felten about it, who is clearly in the crosshairs of this campaign as the only progressive Church in Fountain Hills, he said “It’s hard to imagine how much this kind of publicity would cost if we had to pay for it!” I also talked to ProgressiveChristianity.org’s President, Fred Plummer, who has been at the forefront of the progressive Christian movement for over 20 years. His response was “I think it is great. I believe their actions may unintentionally open up some real questions from people who have never thought about these issues before, and that’s one of the best things that can happen to Christianity.”
These theological differences have created two macro camps. One camp embraces change and explores the ramifications. The other camp seems to double down and go to great lengths to deny them. To achieve their goal, the latter camp spends an exorbitant amount of money and time to choke out education and free thought. The former group chooses to focus on more universal messages such as love, peace, and service.
This brings us back to the signs. The word signs here could be metaphorical too. Consider the “signs of the times.” All credible research points to a U.S. church membership that is shrinking and struggling. All credible data from gen-x’ers and millennials points to a serious disconnect with a judgmental, closed minded, and inwardly focused church. The church is dying, yet it is doubling down under the impression that it just needs to go backwards. Diana Butler-Bass thinks this may only be the beginning of a nationwide campaign. I can only hope. It would be wonderful to hear churchgoers nationwide say “Wow, you mean there are churches down the street where we can follow the examples of Jesus, Peter, James, John, and Paul and not focus on convincing people that Jesus was born of a literal virgin? I want to go to that church!”
So to answer the question of “Progressive Christianity: Fact or Fiction” Well, it’s clearly fact. Church leaders can divert a ton of time and money away from serving the poor, freeing the captives, and healing the sick in order to produce signs and campaigns against educated thought, but that is only going to hurt them more. Progressive Church leaders will keep their doors, hearts, and minds open for anyone who want’s to experience a different type of Christianity.
Eric Alexander is an author, speaker, and the founder of ChristianEvolution.com >>Follow Eric on Facebook<<
Weekly Liturgy
Week of: May 10th - 16th, 2015
Peace of Mind
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. Speak or act with a pure mind and heart and happiness will follow you as your shadow, unshakable.
It is often a huge insight to realize how much control we have over our own thoughts. As Jill Bolte Taylor, author of “My Stroke of Insight,” said in an Oprah interview, “When I find myself thinking a thought that is not helpful, I simply refuse to think it.” She had experienced incredible peace of mind during her left-brain-offline stroke, and was understandably reluctant to give that up. Her challenge was to bring her left brain back online, i.e. recover from the stroke, and still be able to experience that deep sense of peace. In doing so she demonstrated the truth of the wisdom from the Dhammapada:
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. Speak or act with a pure mind and heart and happiness will follow you as your shadow, unshakable.READ ON ...
Worship Materials: Peace of Mind and Prayer
From the Celebrating Mystery collection
THEME A Way of Thinking – a Way of Mindfulness
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION
Peace of mind does not come through struggling to stop thinking, but through focusing the mind on some particular thought or object, and especially on the rhythm of our breathing.
Prayer is not as much a particular activity as a frame of mind.
True prayer is using our imagination in a way that focuses on love.
The way we direct our positive and negative energies in prayer is more important than the form of words.
The prayer that transforms is the prayer that gently embraces; not the prayer that seeks to manipulate or direct.
Prayer is a way of connecting with the rest of life.
Do not let other people decide what is the best form of prayer for you.
No one knows better than you what is best for you.
You are your own best guru.
Do not let the discipline of prayer become a drudgery, nor one’s freedom an excuse for not setting aside time for the spiritual journey.
We access the mystery through letting go, not through filling our minds with thoughts.
When I allowed love to enter my life it gently touched me on the shoulder and beckoned me to follow. This I did with hope and trepidation not knowing where it should take me but resting in the aura of well-being which it cast around me.
Deeper than the ‘to be or not to be’ is the I AM.
There is nothing more wonder-filled than the awesomeness of the present moment.
Search for the stillness and it will elude you.
Go with the flowing and you will become your stillness.
Positive thinking is not enough in order to tackle the world’s problems.
We need reflective action if we are to avoid creating our own apocalypse.
Peace lies not in the absence of conflict but in the still point at its heart.
The silence between our thoughts is the fracture in the clouds that reveals the azure peace of eternity.
Being fully alive comes from immersion in the river of the Cosmos rather than remaining trapped within the stream of one’s consciousness.
If you attempt to capture the moment you loose it but if you let the moment capture you, you find it.
Come out of the silence and take it with you.
To only have positive thoughts is to deny life itself for life is always a mixture of the positive and the negative. It is what we discern beyond these that gives life its fullest meaning.
The process of enlightenment is not one of denial but of bringing to the light of day what we previously could not face in ourselves. However, this process is not in order to pour judgment upon our shadow but in order to surround it with transforming love.
May I not be so enchanted by still waters that I do nothing about the injustice and oppression of this world.
In my solitude I am at one with all things.
In my loneliness I am not even at one with myself.
You are the seer who can observe your thoughts.
To trust in future hopes is not nearly as secure as to dwell in the certainty of the inner heaven of the NOW.
There is no peace with sharing.
When I stop struggling to be I discover I AM.
The secret of praying lies not so much in talking but in listening for then a whole new world of sacredness can impinge upon us.
PRAYER
O God, who can be approached in a thousand ways, may the form of prayer we choose contribute to our mental health and not to the undermining of it. May it help us to affirm ourselves and other people and to increasingly open our lives to your love.
HYMNS
When we have moved. (BL)
How liberated are those. (BL)
I will talk to my heart.
Help us O Christ.
Between our thoughts.
O God of Earth and God of Sky. (STS1)
Out of the stillness. (STS1)
Help me to pray as Jesus prayed. (STS2)
If my heart grows icy cold. (STS2)
Christ Jesus praying from the cross. (STS2)
May the peace of God. (STS2)
That of God within us all. (STS2)
Singing the Sacred Vol 1 2011, Vol 2 2014 World Library Publications
SONG FOR TEENS
Great Life-force, God of all nurture. (Modern Lord’s Prayer) (SYSJ)
RESPONSES AND CHANTS
Intercessory Responses. (BL)
I am Dancer. (BL)
Beyond the rain.(BL)
Between the stillness of the rock.
RESPONSIVE READING
A paraphrase of the Beatitudes (SE/MU)
POEMS / REFLECTIONS
WHEN I SIT
When I sit in the mall or the park
and watch all the world go by
I am no longer the victim
of my concerns, limitations and frustrations
but I am the true uncluttered me.
O that I might make more time to sit and watch
and become one with all that is.
A PARAPHRASE OF THE LORD’S PRAYER
O God of Sky and Earth
We reverence your presence
Both within us and beyond.
May what we eat sustain us
In the Way of compassionate sharing.
Help us to be forgiving –
Forgiving others, forgiving ourselves.
Liberate us from guilt
That learning from our mistakes
We may move beyond self-centeredness
To that depth of being
In which we are one with all things.
This Way of love, peace and justice
Is for the Earth, for human beings and for all living creatures
Both now and forever. AMEN
WHAT I THINK
What I think in my mind can destroy me,
What I think in my mind can fulfill me,
Therefore I will watch what I think.
KNOWING AND SHARING ONENESS
When our minds and hearts
have grown beyond
infantile conformity
give us, O God,
analysis that does not kill respect,
certainty that reaches beyond arrogance,
awareness of manipulation that responds with compassion
and the knowledge that the drumbeat
our deepest psyche would march to
is the pulse of the universe.
Help us to know that individual and community needs
coincide at our spirit’s omega point,
that connectedness is not blandness,
nor is community anonymity.
Enable us to see that oneness lies
in the integrating enrichment of diversity,
that diversity which is the very earth
out of which unity flowers.
May I, O God,
cease to evaluate myself in isolation
but sacramentally, sacrificially, sensuously
offer my inner wealth to the whole
and in that offering open myself
to the multitudinous gifts
which the complex known and unknown
forever awaits
my willingness to accept
from the hands of its
gracious hospitality.
A PARAPHRASE OF PART OF THE PEACE PRAYER OF ST FRANCIS
O loving Christ may I become an instrument of your peace:
Grant that I may learn
To strive but not compete,
To be empowered without seeking to oppress,
To stand tall without looking down on others,
To be aware of my inner wisdom without attempting to inflict it on anyone else.
For it is in letting go that we find peace,
In abandoning arrogance that we find truth
And in taking risks that we find love.
I EXPERIENCE GOD
In every act of creating
I experience God.
In all that is truly human,
In the midst of pain and destruction,
I experience God.
In new life,
in nature,
in other human beings
and in the recesses of my own spirit,
I experience God.
In victory and defeat,
In power and humility,
In the action of forgiveness and reconciliation,
I experience God.
In community and in solitude,
In history and in the present moment,
I experience God.
Whenever there is the spirit of life, love and empowerment,
I experience God.
But above all in the mystery beyond all other mysteries,
I experience God.
PATHWAY
May we move beyond the path of negation,
the path of guilt and self denial,
the path of self-imposed crucifixion
and division and warfare,
to the space of the holding together of pain and joy
the fragmentation of images,
the oneness of vision,
the connectedness with all things,
the darkness of the mystery
and the delight in the Inner Christ
within the ever expanding circle of love
that from that space we may gracefully glide
down the spiraling path of wisdom,
down to the rhythmic curves of the interweaving of Earth and Sky,
Mother and Father,
Sage and Lover,
down to the centre of things
where the smallest grain of sand
stands side by side with the furthest galaxy,
where human beings and the rest of nature intertwine
and the endless ages
rest within each sacred moment.
FOCUS FOR ACTION
Introduction.
When a person suffers from mental illness, a common description is that they have ‘gone out of their mind’. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. They are often consumed in an endless cycle of thought which feeds on itself like the forms of anxiety that fall within the so-called ‘normal’ range. What such a mentally ill person seems to lack is the ability to stand to one side and observe their thought processes. Each of us needs to affirm that we are greater than our thoughts.
People who are comparatively ‘healthy’ psychologically do have the power to control their mind and can change the way they think. St Paul said, “Have that mind in you which was in Jesus Christ” or in other words, let your ‘Inner Christ’, your ‘I am’, your ‘that of God’ observe and take control of your thought processes. This in effect is a way of praying.
1. What method of praying do I predominately use:
talking with ‘a God out there’?
talking to the ‘God within’, the Inner Christ, the I AM, ‘that of God’?
meditation (meeting God in the silence)?
reflection (thinking in the presence of God)?
contemplation (focusing on a particular thought about God or image of God) ?
observing my thoughts from the perspective of the Inner Christ
(see introduction above)?
simply concentrating on the now, for to be fully alive in the present moment is to participate in a ‘heaven’?
2. Would it be useful for me to use some of the other ways of praying outlined above as well as the one I am currently using?
Note: A useful exercise at the beginning of prayer is to relax the body and become aware of the rhythm of breathing. On the in breath say ‘let’ and on the out breath say ‘go’ or ‘love’ then ‘God’, or ‘en’ then ‘joy’, or ‘for’ then ‘give’ etc.
LOGO NOTE: At the heart of the mystery all the separate boxes disappear and all is one, all is love.
Text and graphic © William Livingstone Wallace but available for free use.
For Serenity
Faith in goodness leads to serenity, where peace with quiet flows. With faith I can cease being a hostage in the jail of fear and grief, and escape the prison of what went wrong. And although I know how stresses must return, with crafty forces of compulsion that repeat persistent woe, my inner healing grows. Compassion empowers my core. When greedy habits demand my fate with desperate needs, and awful compulsions aggravate my equanimity, patient restoration whispers calming insights. I cannot understand why goodness and compassion call through the turmoil, but with each belief in reconciliation, I move closer to home.
When I Pray
When I pray I feel more deeply;
Reaching out with thanks and praise;
When I pray I think more deeply;
Pondering life’s puzzling maze;
When I pray I live more deeply
In the values love conveys.
When I pray I can’t act badly
Giving way to grim deceit;
When I pray I can’t be angry,
Wishing for some vengeance sweet;
When I pray I’m far more ready
To befriend each one I meet.
When I pray I act intently
Showing kindness, patience, grace;
When I pray I strive intently
Seeking justice for each race;
When I pray I toil intently
Building peace in every place.
When I pray I speak more clearly
To affirm the ones who fail;
When I pray I give more freely
To the poor, infirm or frail;
When I pray I live more fully,
And in God I can prevail.
Tune: Holywood
or any 8.7.8.7.8.7, such as Regent Square (Angels from the Realms of Glory) or Picardy (Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence)
Events and Updates
Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization
“Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization” focuses on big ideas for a thriving ecosphere and will feature up to 1,000 presenters over 80 areas of specialty.
Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization
“Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization” focuses on big ideas for a thriving ecosphere and will feature up to 1,000 presenters over 80 areas of specialty.
Plenary speakers include Bill McKibben, Vandana Shiva, Sheri Liao, Wes Jackson, Herman Daly, and John B. Cobb, Jr.
The conference is organized around the idea that there is an alternative to modern industrial life, and that in order to avoid catastrophic conditions we must seize an alternative way of thinking and living. That “alternative” is an ecological worldview.
Four-Day Conference
Choose any one of twelve general Sections to attend, then select one specific Track offered within that Section. You are encouraged to stay with the Track throughout the conference, as you and other Track participants will form a working group. Each day of the conference opens and closes with a Plenary. For a complete list of the Sections and Tracks, click below.
Cost: $300 for full conference access (early registration price through May 15, $400 thereafter).
Saturday Package
The Saturday Package offers the opportunity to sample conference events and opens with a 9:00 a.m. Plenary. Afterwards, you may attend one session per time slot: 11:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. There are breaks for lunch, dinner and networking. The day concludes with a 7:00 p.m. Plenary. For a list of the Saturday session choices and an overview of the day’s events, click below.
Cost: $29 for Saturday Package access.
Images
June 4, 2015
End:
June 7, 2015
Location:
Bridges Auditorium
450 N. College Way
Claremont CA
Organization:
Pando Populus
Website:
Telephone:
909-621-5330
Our mailing address is:
Progressive Christianity
4810 Pt. Fosdick Drive NW#80
Gig Harbor, Washington 98335 United States
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment