Weekly Recap for Tuesday, October 27, 2015 from ProgressiveChristianity.org in Gig Harbor, Washington, United StatesFree Weekly Recap of our most viewed and new resources from last week.
Last Week At ProgressiveChristianity.org...
We delved into the topics of Tradition and Altruism,Wholeness and Healing, St. Francis and Aging.
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Between Tradition and Altruism
Gretta Vosper
The more I have thought about it over the years, the more I have wrestled with the limitation of Fowler’s stages.
READ ON ... A tribute to Dr. James Fowler, 1940-2015
by Gretta Vosper
Like David, I, too, was highly influenced by Fowler as was the late Marcus Borg who focused the attention of liberal Christians on three of Fowler’s mid-stages, renaming them “Pre-critical Naivete, Critical Thinking, and Post-Critical Naivete. Borg’s interpretation of Fowler’s Stages of Faith picked Fowler’s work up from the theological college or university, dusted it clean of its academic, empirical language, and shared it with the people in the pews. That work has been central to the progressive Christian undertaking.
Unlike Marcus Borg, however, I don’t think that Post-Critical Naivete, or as Fowler originally named it, the Conjunctive Stage, is a helpful place for people to remain. It’s much, much better than sitting in the confusion and anger that the Individuative Reflexive Stage offers with its “Why didn’t you tell me?” lament. But there has to be something between there and the grand, expansive altruism of Fowler’s Universalizing Stage. Doesn’t there?
“Dr. James Fowler” cartoon by naked pastor David Hayward
The more I have thought about it over the years, the more I have wrestled with the limitation of Fowler’s stages. There is an edge to the Conjunctive Stage that allows us to let go of the mythic language and stories of our faith traditions and move into a place that is purely focused on values. It pulls us past a space inhabited with tradition and all the barriers and divisiveness that tradition, particularly religious tradition, can impose on the human family.
But does it drop us into the emptiness where another stage that Fowler didn’t articulate exists or does it press us into Fowler’s Universalizing category? Is it a seamless transition, no air between the two, or is there a gap? Wouldn’t it be presumptuous or arrogant for those who position themselves beyond Borg to identify as being in Stage Six? Are those who no longer carry the heavy burden of archaic language and tradition suddenly as selfless and pure as Fowler has described there?
I need to go back and re-read what I haven’t steeped myself in since I completed writingAmen: What Prayer Can Be in a World Beyond Belief. Revisiting Fowler’s work will be my little tribute to him. In Amen, I argued that using stages to affirm shifts and changes in belief were positive despite the clamor that suggests doing so is offensive to those who are not in one of the more enlightened stages. I also argued that Fowler’s Stages could and perhaps should be applied to religious institutions that, once in Stage Six where I believe they belong, they would work to thrust us forward and toward one another instead of away and apart.
I will be looking for the edges of the Conjunctive Stage that hold us within it or the markers that lie within the Universalizing Stage that permit us entrance without our having to be Mahatmas, Great Souls considered so because of the unrestrained availability of their compassion. If they aren’t there, more work needs to be done to acknowledge that there is a stage beyond divisive language and religious tradition that allows for the nurture of humanitarian values, the acknowledgement of our aloneness in a seemingly indifferent universe, the recognition of our extraordinary beauty, and a desire to create meaning and live into that work. A spiritual stage that is equally one of faith.
Perhaps identifying how far we have come will allow us to pledge ourselves to a common future path. Perhaps it will help us engage our denominations and religious institutions to see with the eyes of a universalizing faith, one in which we place our trust, our fidelity, not in the supernatural deity we left back in Stage Three, but in one another. No matter what stage that project might land itself in, it is the one to which we must put our shoulders. And I believe it is the work Dr. Fowler would have encouraged us to do.
Worship Materials: Wholeness and Healing
The more I have thought about it over the years, the more I have wrestled with the limitation of Fowler’s stages.
READ ON ... A tribute to Dr. James Fowler, 1940-2015
by Gretta Vosper
Like David, I, too, was highly influenced by Fowler as was the late Marcus Borg who focused the attention of liberal Christians on three of Fowler’s mid-stages, renaming them “Pre-critical Naivete, Critical Thinking, and Post-Critical Naivete. Borg’s interpretation of Fowler’s Stages of Faith picked Fowler’s work up from the theological college or university, dusted it clean of its academic, empirical language, and shared it with the people in the pews. That work has been central to the progressive Christian undertaking.
Unlike Marcus Borg, however, I don’t think that Post-Critical Naivete, or as Fowler originally named it, the Conjunctive Stage, is a helpful place for people to remain. It’s much, much better than sitting in the confusion and anger that the Individuative Reflexive Stage offers with its “Why didn’t you tell me?” lament. But there has to be something between there and the grand, expansive altruism of Fowler’s Universalizing Stage. Doesn’t there?
“Dr. James Fowler” cartoon by naked pastor David Hayward
The more I have thought about it over the years, the more I have wrestled with the limitation of Fowler’s stages. There is an edge to the Conjunctive Stage that allows us to let go of the mythic language and stories of our faith traditions and move into a place that is purely focused on values. It pulls us past a space inhabited with tradition and all the barriers and divisiveness that tradition, particularly religious tradition, can impose on the human family.
But does it drop us into the emptiness where another stage that Fowler didn’t articulate exists or does it press us into Fowler’s Universalizing category? Is it a seamless transition, no air between the two, or is there a gap? Wouldn’t it be presumptuous or arrogant for those who position themselves beyond Borg to identify as being in Stage Six? Are those who no longer carry the heavy burden of archaic language and tradition suddenly as selfless and pure as Fowler has described there?
I need to go back and re-read what I haven’t steeped myself in since I completed writingAmen: What Prayer Can Be in a World Beyond Belief. Revisiting Fowler’s work will be my little tribute to him. In Amen, I argued that using stages to affirm shifts and changes in belief were positive despite the clamor that suggests doing so is offensive to those who are not in one of the more enlightened stages. I also argued that Fowler’s Stages could and perhaps should be applied to religious institutions that, once in Stage Six where I believe they belong, they would work to thrust us forward and toward one another instead of away and apart.
I will be looking for the edges of the Conjunctive Stage that hold us within it or the markers that lie within the Universalizing Stage that permit us entrance without our having to be Mahatmas, Great Souls considered so because of the unrestrained availability of their compassion. If they aren’t there, more work needs to be done to acknowledge that there is a stage beyond divisive language and religious tradition that allows for the nurture of humanitarian values, the acknowledgement of our aloneness in a seemingly indifferent universe, the recognition of our extraordinary beauty, and a desire to create meaning and live into that work. A spiritual stage that is equally one of faith.
Perhaps identifying how far we have come will allow us to pledge ourselves to a common future path. Perhaps it will help us engage our denominations and religious institutions to see with the eyes of a universalizing faith, one in which we place our trust, our fidelity, not in the supernatural deity we left back in Stage Three, but in one another. No matter what stage that project might land itself in, it is the one to which we must put our shoulders. And I believe it is the work Dr. Fowler would have encouraged us to do.
Worship Materials: Wholeness and Healing
William Wallace
LOGO NOTE: At the heart of the mystery all the separate boxes disappear and all is one, all is love.
A Feminist, the Niqab, St. Francis and the Sultan: A Sermon for the Commemoration of St. FrancisRev.
THEME: Pilgrimage Beyond Fragmentation. Discovery of Identity
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION
God is both the source, measure and fullness of wholeness.
Wholeness is a process rather than a static state:
it is not an end to the journey but the journey itself.
Body, mind and spirit are not three separate entities but three manifestations of the one life-force.
Dis-ease of mind, sooner or later leads to disease of the body.
The theology of the head can be heartless,
the theology of the heart can be gutless,
but the theology of the gut needs
the theology of the head to inform it
and the theology of the heart to warm it.
Reason is a mark of sanity.
Emotion is a mark of humanity.
Spirit is a mark of divinity.
Without reason there is no true sanity.
With reason alone there is no true humanity.
Love for other people never really occurs to any depth,
or with any lasting quality unless we first respect,
enjoy and love being ourselves.
Hating oneself and feeling bad about oneself is a major source of psychological illness.
The path of wholeness lies in awareness, dialogue and compassionate action.
In the depths of the parts lies the oneness, the wholeness; therefore I will look within and see the beyond.
I am the only thing that prevents me from being myself.
Being open to and working through our vulnerability and wounds is a path to wholeness.
The greatest achievement is to learn to be and to rest in that awareness.
Blessed are those who learn from all life’s experiences for they shall be filled with wisdom.
The Way is a path of inner freedom walking hand in hand with outer responsibility.
To accept criticism is a sign of grace.
To learn from criticism is a sign of wisdom.
To engage in self criticism is a sign of maturity.
When I see God in people who cannot see God in themselves, it surprises them and transforms me.
The balanced person is perceived as a threat by those at the extremes.
Reshape your chaos with tenderness for the chaos births the transforming dream.
To find the dance of the Cosmos in your own heart is to be at home everywhere.
What we feel in our gut can change the world provided that it is not intellectualized out of existence by our mind or sentimentalized by our heart.
There is a sacred book in the heart. Read it, value it, reverence it, live by it for it is the wisdom of all people throughout all time.
In the “In-between” there is the “in” that bridges the “between” and births a new wholeness.
To be fully aware is to see beyond and within at the same time.
Intensity is the enemy of awareness. Fear is the product of limited awareness.
True fullness lies in the emptiness, false emptiness in the fullness.
We are saved by the mystery and not by the dogma, by the letting go and not by the struggle.
What matters is not the poshness of the faucet but the purity of the water.
It is better to be eccentrically rounded than linearly confined.
Wisdom is a gift not a possession. It does not belong to you, you belong to it in the way that you belong to all things.
Unity is not simplicity but the interweaving dance of life’s infinite variety and apparent opposites.
To see clearly is to realize that one is surrounded by people who live by half truths.
Abandon yourself to the otherness and you will find yourself in the process.
To those who seek to deny their own spirit there is no greater threat than people who with delight and enthusiasm affirm and express their life-force.
The particular can be the doorway to the universal or the vehicle of idolatry. Therefore be careful in your use of sacred books, ceremonies, places, times, ideology or institutions.
Let thinking be the servant of intuition and not its master.
The secret of wholeness is to immerse your wounds in the river of love and then to discover that you are more than your history.
The process of enlightenment does not consist of increasingly punishing our inadequacies but of allowing our divine energy to emerge into the light of day and to transform our manipulative and arrogant attitudes.
At the centre of Universe/Life/Psyche is the I AM, the divine Agony and Ecstasy.
The blood of birth and the blood of death are the same blood and the tears of joy and the tears of pain come from the same river of life.
In all and through all there is the I AM.
The many and the One are two faces of the one inclusive, nurturing and life-giving reality.
It is not just a question of protecting oneself from evil but of actively enfolding all that is evil within the great circle of loving kindness.
What appears as two is finally one. We all come from the atoms of the big bang. We all return to the soil and air.
As we become what we are, we cease to be only what we were.
The transparent person is the one through whom we can see what lies within and behind.
It is not life’s tragedies that destroy us but the way we react to them.
One of the greatest obstacles to wholeness is our unwillingness to unblock our capacity for tenderness and love.
There is no worse fate than not to have really lived before you die.
PRAYERS
O God, help us to be in touch
with that gentleness from which springs strength,
that silence from which springs wisdom,
that chaos from which springs creativity,
that openness from which springs love,
those wounds from which spring our sense of justice
and that depth of being from which springs wholeness.
O God who is ever willing to assist in the healing
of our wounded spirits but who never imposes wholeness upon us,
help us to be co-workers with you in the process
of creating a better world for human beings
and for all the other expressions of your life force on this planet.
O God may my wild storm arise out of my still waters
that my anger may be focused on the support of just causes
rather than being an expression of inner turmoil.
HYMNS
Let your eye be single. (BL)
The darkness and the light. (BL)
Amid the many thoughts. (BL)
May the sap flow in our hearts. (BL)
I am greater than my thinking. (BL)
God wake us from illusion. (BL)
An awakening is beginning. (BL)
Knock, knock, knock. (BL)
Thank you, thank you, thank you God. (BL)
Let opposites all share. (BL)
We are always part of the other. (BL)
Awaken O my inner self. (BL)
We are one with the creatures. (BL)
We are children of the Cosmos. (BL)
I will walk the circle of the Earth. (BL)
All life’s many cycles. (BL)
The world within. (BL)
We the many all belong. (BL)
Within the shadows of our thinking. (BL)
Sowing limits what we harvest. (BL)
When we discern Earth’s fractured face. (BL)
When the world reveals a fractured face. (BL)
You are the process God. (BL)
When we have moved. (BL)
If passion urges us. (BL)
No-one can share my inner space. (BL)
As wind that dances. (BL)
The meek shall inherit the Earth. (BL)
O help us most loving and life-giving God.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
I will talk to my heart in the stillness.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
The right time has come.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
No outcasts were condemned by Christ.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
God is found in all of life.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
Throughout this land.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
Within the manger of our mind.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
O God how can there be one world?
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
The Way of God.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
When love flies on the wings of sacrifice
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
What does our God require of us?
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
Between our thoughts.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
Christ the tent.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
We are sisters of the earth.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
Choose life.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
Glory to you O God. (SE/MU)
The way of Life. (STS1)
Enter the stillness. (STS1)
Luke the physician. (STS1)
When the temple veil is torn in two. (STS1)
God is beyond all words. (STS1)
Which place can we call home? (STS2)
God now calls us each to seek. (STS2)
That of God within us all. (STS2)
Each family in its heart. (STS2)
Singing the Sacred Vol 1 2011, Vol 2 2014 World Library Publications
POEMS / REFLECTIONS
BEHIND THE MANY FRAGMENTS
Behind the many fragments there is one.
I touch the fragments and feel one.
I look at the fragments and see one.
I play with the fragments and delight in one.
I love the fragments and I am one.
IN THE TWILIGHT OF IMAGES
In the twilight of images
there is grief, aloneness and emptiness.
But the presence does not die
only the explanation,
the articulation,
the limitation.
It is like music without written notes,
so we listen to the inner sound
without the distraction of the visual,
yet hear the rhythm of the Cosmic God in all we see.
HEALING THE HURTS
From the space of security we allow the mind to symbolically unravel our past rejections and hurts and bathing them all in the cleansing and healing waters of divinity leave behind any desire for revenge or the need to receive an abject apology. We will begin to see even within these psychologically destructive experiences glimpses of divinity, for divinity is such that it is never totally obscured even in the most dreadful circumstances. All we need to do is to let go and move further into the mystery, for the mystery’s heart is love and its compassion gifts us an awareness of the other’s pain, an awareness which facilitates forgiveness.
LIFE IS MORE
Life is more than the cold touch of the alienated heart,
Life is more than the darkness of the moralist’s mind,
Life is more than the torn tissue of a dying cross,
Life is the raging warmth of the unfettered way
That reason alone can never find.
TO GROW
To grow is to seek
Serenity when anxiety seems to rule,
Awareness when distortions appear to prevail,
Wholeness when dislocations abound
And altruism when self-centeredness appears
To be the order of the day.
MODEL FOR PERSONAL LIBERATION
Jesus and the Samarian Woman (John 4:5-42)
Liberation from slavishly and blindly following tradition sexism, racism, nationalism. (John 4:7-9 & 12)
Liberation from literalism and purely superficial conversation. (John 4:9-13)
Liberation from simplistic morality and instead viewing morality as a door-way into spirituality. (John 4:16-18)
Liberation from belief in a localized God. (John 4:19)
The liberation of true dialogue. (John 4:25-26)
The liberation of discovering one’s inner spring of life-giving water. (John 4:13)
The liberation of sharing one’s story. (John 4:29)
The goal of liberation is living the life of spirit within the freedom and discipline of a celebrating community. (Acts 2:42-47)
THE STRUGGLE AND THE FLOW
How easy it is to over-simplify the character of other human beings and of oneself.
Was not Beethoven the archetypal wild storm
and Hildegard of Bingen the woman of ‘flowing’.
Yet there is also a peaceful flowing within much of Beethoven’s music
and wild storm in the relation-ship between Hildegard
and the male hierarchy of the Church of her day.
Within each of us there is both the struggle and the flow,
the wild storm and the gentle passage of still waters.
REFLECTIONS ON INCLUSIVENESS
Inclusiveness is not simply an intellectual awareness but the wisdom that comes through experiencing the depths of both grief and ecstasy in which all divisions melt and we become one with the earth and sky, the rivers and the sea, the creatures and the plants and all humankind for the spark of divinity in each of these is the same spark that is in every human being and the drop of blood and the tongue of fire
are one and the same in the wholeness of divinity.
IF REALITY
If reality is simple
Then inflexible morality,
Inflexible worship,
Inflexible ideology and social mores
Will heal us.
But if reality is complex
They will dismember and disembowel us.
A MANY SPLENDOURED FABRIC
Life is like
a series of
woven panels ‑
sometimes
it is icy blue at the centre
with warmth restricted to the edges:
at other times
its core is fire
edged with coldness
of inadequate relationships ‑
but seen from a distance
all the reds and blues merge
to produce a purple of noble intensity.
Give me O God your perspective
that both my fire and my pain
may be gathered up
into the encompassing fabric
of your many splendored love.
INCOMPLETENESS
If my heart dances and my body remains still
how incomplete I am.
If my mind goes on pilgrimage
and leaves my body behind
how incomplete I am.
If the masculine in me fights with the feminine
and they never intertwine in love
how incomplete I am.
If my present seeks to deny my history
how incomplete I am.
If I attempt to divide people up into
the wise and the foolish,
the good and the bad,
how incomplete I am.
If I imprison my faith in changeless dogma
or inflexible liturgy
how incomplete I am.
If I do not allow my inner and outer worlds
to nurture each other
how incomplete I am.
If in my incompleteness I have no vision of wholeness
what a captive of incompleteness I am.
Yet within my incompleteness there is a completeness ‑
a spark of divinity, a seed of resurrection,
a rainbow of glory
and that shall be my point of peace,
beauty, love and transformation.
MOISTURE
The peace of the still lake and the fury of the stormy sea,
The destructive flood and the life giving rain
Are all part of the waters of the earth.
The tears of joy and the tears of grief
Are all part of the waters of the earth
And all of the waters of the earth are part of
The moisture of God.
WHICH ME ?
“Which me should I be, O God?”
And God replied
“There is only one me that you should be
And that is the self that lies beyond
Its many fragmentations and distortions.
But as yet you are not fully you,
You are an incomplete whole,
The seed of what you could become.
Do not fret as to which path to wholeness
You should choose.
Simply rest in my both/and
Which lies behind and within
All either/or’s
This way is the way of embodied discernment,
The local and global connectedness
Which enables you to cease worrying
Who you are
And instead allows you to delight
In losing yourself
In the intoxication of love for all things,
An intoxication which enables you
To be the vintage version of yourself,
The version that most resembles
MYSELF.”
FOCUS FOR ACTION
Religion has produced some of the most wonderful, loving and beautiful creations and relationships in the history of the world . However, conversely it has also produced, or significantly contributed to, some of the greatest conflicts and abuses of human beings and of nature. In religion, as in life as a whole, the sacred and the profane, the creative and the destructive are intertwined (sometimes obviously, at other times in a much more hidden manner). It is easy but not helpful to identify the destructive element in other people and in other world religions. It is more healthy to enquire what form this intertwining takes in our own personality, in our own denomination and in our own local church or group.
If our religion or a particular attitude to religion which we have is undermining our mental health by
heaping guilt upon us,
alienating us from our sexuality,
encouraging us to remain in the dependency role,
fostering our fears,
encouraging us only to look at the surface of reality,
feeding us over-simplified understandings of the complexly of human nature,
discouraging us from being in touch with our own power and wisdom,
providing uncritical acceptance of the society in which we live,
undermining our self-esteem,
encouraging us to believe that our ideology or culture makes us superior to other people, then perhaps we should seriously look at adopting a new approach to our spiritual journey.
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.
READ ON ... A Feminist, the Niqab, St. Francis and the Sultan: A Sermon for the Commemoration of St. FrancisRev.
Dawn HutchinsThe Season of Creation ends with the commemoration of St. Francis and the rhetoric of election season together with the events chronicled in Paul Moses book “The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam, and Francis of Assisi’s Mission of Peace” inspired this sermon.
The reading from St. Francis and the Scripture reading can be found hereReading from St. Francis: OUR NEED FOR THEE In our ever present need for thee: Beloved, let us know your peace. Let us be your instruments that break every shackle, for do not the caged ones weep? And give us our inheritance of divine love so that we can forgive like you. And let us be wise, so that we do not wed another’s madness and then make them in debt to us for the deep gash their helpless raging lance will cause. Darkness is an unlit wick; it just needs your touch, Beloved, to become a sacred flame. And what sadness in this world could endure if it looked into your eyes? God is like a honeybee, God doesn’t mind me calling God that; for when you are kind--sweet--God nears, and can draw you into Godself. What is there to understand of each other: if a wand turned the sun into a moon would not the moon mourn the ecstatic effulgence it once was. We are all in mourning for the experience of our essence we knew and now miss. Light is the cure, all else a placebo. Yes, I will console any creature before me that is not laughing or full of passion for their art or life; for laughing and passion-- beauty and joy--is our heart’s truth, all else is labour and foreign to the soul. I have stood in God’s rain and now fill granaries as do the fertile plains: giving is as natural to love as sound from the mouth. There is a courageous dying, it is called effacement. That holy death unfurls our spirit’s wings and allows us to embrace God even as we stand on the earth. GOD WOULD KNEEL DOWN I think God might be a little prejudiced. For once God asked me to join God on a walk through this world, and we gazed into every heart on this earth, and I noticed God lingered a bit longer before any face that was weeping, and before any eyes that were laughing. And sometimes when we passed a soul in worship God too would kneel down. I have Come to learn: God adores God’s creation.
The reading from St. Francis and the Scripture reading can be found hereReading from St. Francis: OUR NEED FOR THEE In our ever present need for thee: Beloved, let us know your peace. Let us be your instruments that break every shackle, for do not the caged ones weep? And give us our inheritance of divine love so that we can forgive like you. And let us be wise, so that we do not wed another’s madness and then make them in debt to us for the deep gash their helpless raging lance will cause. Darkness is an unlit wick; it just needs your touch, Beloved, to become a sacred flame. And what sadness in this world could endure if it looked into your eyes? God is like a honeybee, God doesn’t mind me calling God that; for when you are kind--sweet--God nears, and can draw you into Godself. What is there to understand of each other: if a wand turned the sun into a moon would not the moon mourn the ecstatic effulgence it once was. We are all in mourning for the experience of our essence we knew and now miss. Light is the cure, all else a placebo. Yes, I will console any creature before me that is not laughing or full of passion for their art or life; for laughing and passion-- beauty and joy--is our heart’s truth, all else is labour and foreign to the soul. I have stood in God’s rain and now fill granaries as do the fertile plains: giving is as natural to love as sound from the mouth. There is a courageous dying, it is called effacement. That holy death unfurls our spirit’s wings and allows us to embrace God even as we stand on the earth. GOD WOULD KNEEL DOWN I think God might be a little prejudiced. For once God asked me to join God on a walk through this world, and we gazed into every heart on this earth, and I noticed God lingered a bit longer before any face that was weeping, and before any eyes that were laughing. And sometimes when we passed a soul in worship God too would kneel down. I have Come to learn: God adores God’s creation.
Matthew 11:16-19
Jesus said, What comparison can I make with this generation? They are like children shouting to others as they sit in the marketplace. ‘We piped you a tune, but you wouldn’t dance. We sang you a dirge, but you wouldn’t mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say. “He is possessed.’ The Chosen One comes, eating and drinking and they say, “This one is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ Wisdom will be vindicated by her own actions.”
Listen to the sermon here
Listen to the sermon here
https://pastordawn.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/st_francis_2015.m4a
READ ON ...
Weekly Liturgy
Weekly Liturgy
Week of: October 18th, 2015
Aging
Ancient wisdom from all traditions teaches that the key to aging gracefully is facing and accepting our own mortality. Fear of death underlies so many aberrant behaviors… what would the world look like if that fear were replaced by a serene acceptance? Or as Steve Jobs famously said, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
READ ON ...
Worship Materials: Wholeness and Healing
Lead Me On
Deuteronomy 29:5 on Aging by Rabbi Allen S. Maller
"I appreciate your focus on how Jesus lived and what he taught rather than his death and the need to us to believe something about him that I don’t believe he believed... Thanks for bringing relief and hope and joy back into our lives. Having this kind of community means everything to us who have always felt the call to bring “good” news to the left out and abandoned, etc. You bring good news. Thank you!" ~ Rev. San Rogers, Interfaith Minister
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Events and Updates
The Public is Invited to Pacific University, Portland, OR for Middle East Peace Forum
On October 29th at 6:00pm the Pacific University's Center for Peace and Spirituality invites the public to a reception and forum with leaders of The Abraham Fund Initiatives of Israel, an entity that promotes coexistence and equality among Israel's Jewish and Arab citizens.
READ ON ...
October 29, 2015 06:00 PM
End:
October 29, 2015
Location:
Pacific University
Rooms 223 and 224 of Jefferson Hall on the University's Forest Grove Campus
Portland OR
Contact:
Rev. Dr. Currie
Website:
http://www.pacificu.edu/about-us/news-events/public-invited-pacific-university-middle-east-peace-forum-thursday-oct-29
Email:
chuck.currie@pacificu.edu
Telephone:
503-352-2032
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Aging
Ancient wisdom from all traditions teaches that the key to aging gracefully is facing and accepting our own mortality. Fear of death underlies so many aberrant behaviors… what would the world look like if that fear were replaced by a serene acceptance? Or as Steve Jobs famously said, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
Worship Materials: Ageing
THEME Facing Reality with Hope
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION
1. Unlike our bodies our spirits need not be wearied by age but can become more and more lively day by day. To grow in spirit requires a vision that holds all things together.
read more1. Unlike our bodies our spirits need not be wearied by age but can become more and more lively day by day. To grow in spirit requires a vision that holds all things together.
Lead Me On
Take me as I am.
Lead me on.
Lead me on
through the night of mystery
into the morning song.
read moreLead me on.
Lead me on
through the night of mystery
into the morning song.
Deuteronomy 29:5 on Aging
Old age isn’t a one way street.
You can change from hiking briskly in the mountains
To walking slowly in the valley,
Looking at birds, flowers and trees.
You can change from hiking briskly in the mountains
To walking slowly in the valley,
Looking at birds, flowers and trees.
READ ON ...
Worship Materials: Wholeness and Healing
William Wallace
LOGO NOTE: At the heart of the mystery all the separate boxes disappear and all is one, all is love.
THEME: Pilgrimage Beyond Fragmentation. Discovery of Identity
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION
God is both the source, measure and fullness of wholeness.
Wholeness is a process rather than a static state:
it is not an end to the journey but the journey itself.
Body, mind and spirit are not three separate entities but three manifestations of the one life-force.
Dis-ease of mind, sooner or later leads to disease of the body.
The theology of the head can be heartless,
the theology of the heart can be gutless,
but the theology of the gut needs
the theology of the head to inform it
and the theology of the heart to warm it.
Reason is a mark of sanity.
Emotion is a mark of humanity.
Spirit is a mark of divinity.
Without reason there is no true sanity.
With reason alone there is no true humanity.
Love for other people never really occurs to any depth,
or with any lasting quality unless we first respect,
enjoy and love being ourselves.
Hating oneself and feeling bad about oneself is a major source of psychological illness.
The path of wholeness lies in awareness, dialogue and compassionate action.
In the depths of the parts lies the oneness, the wholeness; therefore I will look within and see the beyond.
I am the only thing that prevents me from being myself.
Being open to and working through our vulnerability and wounds is a path to wholeness.
The greatest achievement is to learn to be and to rest in that awareness.
Blessed are those who learn from all life’s experiences for they shall be filled with wisdom.
The Way is a path of inner freedom walking hand in hand with outer responsibility.
To accept criticism is a sign of grace.
To learn from criticism is a sign of wisdom.
To engage in self criticism is a sign of maturity.
When I see God in people who cannot see God in themselves, it surprises them and transforms me.
The balanced person is perceived as a threat by those at the extremes.
Reshape your chaos with tenderness for the chaos births the transforming dream.
To find the dance of the Cosmos in your own heart is to be at home everywhere.
What we feel in our gut can change the world provided that it is not intellectualized out of existence by our mind or sentimentalized by our heart.
There is a sacred book in the heart. Read it, value it, reverence it, live by it for it is the wisdom of all people throughout all time.
In the “In-between” there is the “in” that bridges the “between” and births a new wholeness.
To be fully aware is to see beyond and within at the same time.
Intensity is the enemy of awareness. Fear is the product of limited awareness.
True fullness lies in the emptiness, false emptiness in the fullness.
We are saved by the mystery and not by the dogma, by the letting go and not by the struggle.
What matters is not the poshness of the faucet but the purity of the water.
It is better to be eccentrically rounded than linearly confined.
Wisdom is a gift not a possession. It does not belong to you, you belong to it in the way that you belong to all things.
Unity is not simplicity but the interweaving dance of life’s infinite variety and apparent opposites.
To see clearly is to realize that one is surrounded by people who live by half truths.
Abandon yourself to the otherness and you will find yourself in the process.
To those who seek to deny their own spirit there is no greater threat than people who with delight and enthusiasm affirm and express their life-force.
The particular can be the doorway to the universal or the vehicle of idolatry. Therefore be careful in your use of sacred books, ceremonies, places, times, ideology or institutions.
Let thinking be the servant of intuition and not its master.
The secret of wholeness is to immerse your wounds in the river of love and then to discover that you are more than your history.
The process of enlightenment does not consist of increasingly punishing our inadequacies but of allowing our divine energy to emerge into the light of day and to transform our manipulative and arrogant attitudes.
At the centre of Universe/Life/Psyche is the I AM, the divine Agony and Ecstasy.
The blood of birth and the blood of death are the same blood and the tears of joy and the tears of pain come from the same river of life.
In all and through all there is the I AM.
The many and the One are two faces of the one inclusive, nurturing and life-giving reality.
It is not just a question of protecting oneself from evil but of actively enfolding all that is evil within the great circle of loving kindness.
What appears as two is finally one. We all come from the atoms of the big bang. We all return to the soil and air.
As we become what we are, we cease to be only what we were.
The transparent person is the one through whom we can see what lies within and behind.
It is not life’s tragedies that destroy us but the way we react to them.
One of the greatest obstacles to wholeness is our unwillingness to unblock our capacity for tenderness and love.
There is no worse fate than not to have really lived before you die.
PRAYERS
O God, help us to be in touch
with that gentleness from which springs strength,
that silence from which springs wisdom,
that chaos from which springs creativity,
that openness from which springs love,
those wounds from which spring our sense of justice
and that depth of being from which springs wholeness.
O God who is ever willing to assist in the healing
of our wounded spirits but who never imposes wholeness upon us,
help us to be co-workers with you in the process
of creating a better world for human beings
and for all the other expressions of your life force on this planet.
O God may my wild storm arise out of my still waters
that my anger may be focused on the support of just causes
rather than being an expression of inner turmoil.
HYMNS
Let your eye be single. (BL)
The darkness and the light. (BL)
Amid the many thoughts. (BL)
May the sap flow in our hearts. (BL)
I am greater than my thinking. (BL)
God wake us from illusion. (BL)
An awakening is beginning. (BL)
Knock, knock, knock. (BL)
Thank you, thank you, thank you God. (BL)
Let opposites all share. (BL)
We are always part of the other. (BL)
Awaken O my inner self. (BL)
We are one with the creatures. (BL)
We are children of the Cosmos. (BL)
I will walk the circle of the Earth. (BL)
All life’s many cycles. (BL)
The world within. (BL)
We the many all belong. (BL)
Within the shadows of our thinking. (BL)
Sowing limits what we harvest. (BL)
When we discern Earth’s fractured face. (BL)
When the world reveals a fractured face. (BL)
You are the process God. (BL)
When we have moved. (BL)
If passion urges us. (BL)
No-one can share my inner space. (BL)
As wind that dances. (BL)
The meek shall inherit the Earth. (BL)
O help us most loving and life-giving God.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
I will talk to my heart in the stillness.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
The right time has come.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
No outcasts were condemned by Christ.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
God is found in all of life.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
Throughout this land.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
Within the manger of our mind.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
O God how can there be one world?
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
The Way of God.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
When love flies on the wings of sacrifice
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
What does our God require of us?
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
Between our thoughts.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
Christ the tent.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
We are sisters of the earth.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
Choose life.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
Glory to you O God. (SE/MU)
The way of Life. (STS1)
Enter the stillness. (STS1)
Luke the physician. (STS1)
When the temple veil is torn in two. (STS1)
God is beyond all words. (STS1)
Which place can we call home? (STS2)
God now calls us each to seek. (STS2)
That of God within us all. (STS2)
Each family in its heart. (STS2)
Singing the Sacred Vol 1 2011, Vol 2 2014 World Library Publications
POEMS / REFLECTIONS
BEHIND THE MANY FRAGMENTS
Behind the many fragments there is one.
I touch the fragments and feel one.
I look at the fragments and see one.
I play with the fragments and delight in one.
I love the fragments and I am one.
IN THE TWILIGHT OF IMAGES
In the twilight of images
there is grief, aloneness and emptiness.
But the presence does not die
only the explanation,
the articulation,
the limitation.
It is like music without written notes,
so we listen to the inner sound
without the distraction of the visual,
yet hear the rhythm of the Cosmic God in all we see.
HEALING THE HURTS
From the space of security we allow the mind to symbolically unravel our past rejections and hurts and bathing them all in the cleansing and healing waters of divinity leave behind any desire for revenge or the need to receive an abject apology. We will begin to see even within these psychologically destructive experiences glimpses of divinity, for divinity is such that it is never totally obscured even in the most dreadful circumstances. All we need to do is to let go and move further into the mystery, for the mystery’s heart is love and its compassion gifts us an awareness of the other’s pain, an awareness which facilitates forgiveness.
LIFE IS MORE
Life is more than the cold touch of the alienated heart,
Life is more than the darkness of the moralist’s mind,
Life is more than the torn tissue of a dying cross,
Life is the raging warmth of the unfettered way
That reason alone can never find.
TO GROW
To grow is to seek
Serenity when anxiety seems to rule,
Awareness when distortions appear to prevail,
Wholeness when dislocations abound
And altruism when self-centeredness appears
To be the order of the day.
MODEL FOR PERSONAL LIBERATION
Jesus and the Samarian Woman (John 4:5-42)
Liberation from slavishly and blindly following tradition sexism, racism, nationalism. (John 4:7-9 & 12)
Liberation from literalism and purely superficial conversation. (John 4:9-13)
Liberation from simplistic morality and instead viewing morality as a door-way into spirituality. (John 4:16-18)
Liberation from belief in a localized God. (John 4:19)
The liberation of true dialogue. (John 4:25-26)
The liberation of discovering one’s inner spring of life-giving water. (John 4:13)
The liberation of sharing one’s story. (John 4:29)
The goal of liberation is living the life of spirit within the freedom and discipline of a celebrating community. (Acts 2:42-47)
THE STRUGGLE AND THE FLOW
How easy it is to over-simplify the character of other human beings and of oneself.
Was not Beethoven the archetypal wild storm
and Hildegard of Bingen the woman of ‘flowing’.
Yet there is also a peaceful flowing within much of Beethoven’s music
and wild storm in the relation-ship between Hildegard
and the male hierarchy of the Church of her day.
Within each of us there is both the struggle and the flow,
the wild storm and the gentle passage of still waters.
REFLECTIONS ON INCLUSIVENESS
Inclusiveness is not simply an intellectual awareness but the wisdom that comes through experiencing the depths of both grief and ecstasy in which all divisions melt and we become one with the earth and sky, the rivers and the sea, the creatures and the plants and all humankind for the spark of divinity in each of these is the same spark that is in every human being and the drop of blood and the tongue of fire
are one and the same in the wholeness of divinity.
IF REALITY
If reality is simple
Then inflexible morality,
Inflexible worship,
Inflexible ideology and social mores
Will heal us.
But if reality is complex
They will dismember and disembowel us.
A MANY SPLENDOURED FABRIC
Life is like
a series of
woven panels ‑
sometimes
it is icy blue at the centre
with warmth restricted to the edges:
at other times
its core is fire
edged with coldness
of inadequate relationships ‑
but seen from a distance
all the reds and blues merge
to produce a purple of noble intensity.
Give me O God your perspective
that both my fire and my pain
may be gathered up
into the encompassing fabric
of your many splendored love.
INCOMPLETENESS
If my heart dances and my body remains still
how incomplete I am.
If my mind goes on pilgrimage
and leaves my body behind
how incomplete I am.
If the masculine in me fights with the feminine
and they never intertwine in love
how incomplete I am.
If my present seeks to deny my history
how incomplete I am.
If I attempt to divide people up into
the wise and the foolish,
the good and the bad,
how incomplete I am.
If I imprison my faith in changeless dogma
or inflexible liturgy
how incomplete I am.
If I do not allow my inner and outer worlds
to nurture each other
how incomplete I am.
If in my incompleteness I have no vision of wholeness
what a captive of incompleteness I am.
Yet within my incompleteness there is a completeness ‑
a spark of divinity, a seed of resurrection,
a rainbow of glory
and that shall be my point of peace,
beauty, love and transformation.
MOISTURE
The peace of the still lake and the fury of the stormy sea,
The destructive flood and the life giving rain
Are all part of the waters of the earth.
The tears of joy and the tears of grief
Are all part of the waters of the earth
And all of the waters of the earth are part of
The moisture of God.
WHICH ME ?
“Which me should I be, O God?”
And God replied
“There is only one me that you should be
And that is the self that lies beyond
Its many fragmentations and distortions.
But as yet you are not fully you,
You are an incomplete whole,
The seed of what you could become.
Do not fret as to which path to wholeness
You should choose.
Simply rest in my both/and
Which lies behind and within
All either/or’s
This way is the way of embodied discernment,
The local and global connectedness
Which enables you to cease worrying
Who you are
And instead allows you to delight
In losing yourself
In the intoxication of love for all things,
An intoxication which enables you
To be the vintage version of yourself,
The version that most resembles
MYSELF.”
FOCUS FOR ACTION
Religion has produced some of the most wonderful, loving and beautiful creations and relationships in the history of the world . However, conversely it has also produced, or significantly contributed to, some of the greatest conflicts and abuses of human beings and of nature. In religion, as in life as a whole, the sacred and the profane, the creative and the destructive are intertwined (sometimes obviously, at other times in a much more hidden manner). It is easy but not helpful to identify the destructive element in other people and in other world religions. It is more healthy to enquire what form this intertwining takes in our own personality, in our own denomination and in our own local church or group.
If our religion or a particular attitude to religion which we have is undermining our mental health by
heaping guilt upon us,
alienating us from our sexuality,
encouraging us to remain in the dependency role,
fostering our fears,
encouraging us only to look at the surface of reality,
feeding us over-simplified understandings of the complexly of human nature,
discouraging us from being in touch with our own power and wisdom,
providing uncritical acceptance of the society in which we live,
undermining our self-esteem,
encouraging us to believe that our ideology or culture makes us superior to other people, then perhaps we should seriously look at adopting a new approach to our spiritual journey.
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.
Lead Me On
From the book THE RHYTHM OF STILLNESS by Alice Smith
Take me as I am.
Lead me on.
Lead me on
through the night of mystery
into the morning song.
Take me as I am
filled with hope,
filled with fear.
Take me as I am,
and lead me on.
If I stumble in the dark
sing the notes
loud and strong.
Sing ‘em out.
Sing ‘em clear.
Sing the notes
so I can hear.
Lead me on.
Lead me on
through the night of mystery
into the morning song.
Deuteronomy 29:5 on Aging by Rabbi Allen S. Maller
I am not afraid of dying
But I am afraid of declining.
Forgetting a name or a word,
Waking up stiff with aches and pains,
Having to walk because I cannot run.
Not being able to do what I always could do,
Feeling betrayed by my body’s decline.
Then one Shabbat morning
As the Torah was being read
I heard these words from Deuteronomy 29
For 40 years in the wilderness
your clothes did not wear out,
nor did your shoes wear out and fall off your feet (29:5)
How could that be?
Everything decays and wears out.
Everyone declines, deteriorates and becomes decrepit.
Then suddenly I understood the Torah’s teaching.
Old age isn’t a one way street.
You can change from hiking briskly in the mountains
To walking slowly in the valley,
Looking at birds, flowers and trees.
You can still appreciate seeing and hearing
Even if not so sharply anymore.
You can still do a lot
If you do it unhurriedly.
If you understand the Torah’s teaching
You can spend even 40 years
In the wilderness of decline
Without wearing yourself out,
And falling off your feet.
----------------------------"I appreciate your focus on how Jesus lived and what he taught rather than his death and the need to us to believe something about him that I don’t believe he believed... Thanks for bringing relief and hope and joy back into our lives. Having this kind of community means everything to us who have always felt the call to bring “good” news to the left out and abandoned, etc. You bring good news. Thank you!" ~ Rev. San Rogers, Interfaith Minister
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Events and Updates
The Public is Invited to Pacific University, Portland, OR for Middle East Peace Forum
On October 29th at 6:00pm the Pacific University's Center for Peace and Spirituality invites the public to a reception and forum with leaders of The Abraham Fund Initiatives of Israel, an entity that promotes coexistence and equality among Israel's Jewish and Arab citizens.
READ ON ...
The Public is Invited to Pacific University, Portland, OR for Middle East Peace Forum
Pacific University’s Center for Peace and Spirituality invites the public to a reception and forum with leaders of The Abraham Fund Initiatives of Israel, an entity that promotes coexistence and equality among Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens.
The events will take place on Thursday, Oct. 29, in rooms 223 and 224 of Jefferson Hall on the university’s Forest Grove Campus, with the reception beginning at 6 p.m. and the forum commencing at 7. Admission is free, but seating is limited on a first-come, first-served basis.
The Abraham Fund Initiatives work to “promote coexistence and equality among Israel’s Jewish and Arab-Palestinian citizens. Named after the common ancestor of both Jews and Arabs,The Abraham Fund works toward a prosperous, secure and just society by promoting policies based on innovative social models, conducting large-scale initiatives, advocacy and public education.”
Co-executive directors Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu and Dr. Thabet Abu Rass will be joined Center for Peace and Spirituality director Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie and Dr. Raymond Haija, a member of The Abraham Fund’s U.S. board of directors.
“This summit will provide an opportunity for the Pacific community to begin an important conversation about the on-going crisis in Israel and will look at effective peace-building models,” Rev. Dr. Currie said. “Not every issue will be addressed and we will not solve the issue of peace in the Middle East. We will meet two important Jewish and Muslim leaders working toward that end.”
Pacific University’s Center of Peace and Spirituality provides students with the opportunity to engage in meaningful study, reflection and action based on the recognition that inter- and intra-personal peace are inherently connected and that concerns for personal spirituality are intimately related to concerns for one’s social, historical, cultural and natural environment.
Start:October 29, 2015 06:00 PM
End:
October 29, 2015
Location:
Pacific University
Rooms 223 and 224 of Jefferson Hall on the University's Forest Grove Campus
Portland OR
Contact:
Rev. Dr. Currie
Website:
http://www.pacificu.edu/about-us/news-events/public-invited-pacific-university-middle-east-peace-forum-thursday-oct-29
Email:
chuck.currie@pacificu.edu
Telephone:
503-352-2032
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