Weekly Recap for Tuesday, February 21, 2017 from ProgressiveChristianity.org in Gig Harbor, Washington, United States "Do you believe in the philosophy of love? This and more in our Free Weekly Recap of our most viewed and new resources from last week.
Last Week At ProgressiveChristianity.org ...
We delved into the topics of:
.....* Surviving human trafficking
.....* Can collective consciousness save the planet?
.....* Finding the perfect music
.....* Lent Liturgy
Visit our website to join in on the discussion and to view our thousands of spiritual resources!
We are entirely reader supported, please support us today.
ProgressiveChristianity.org is a global portal for authors, scholars, theologians and liturgists to share their resources for the progressive spiritual journey. 
When Love Wins: How Human Trafficking Survivor Elisia Lopez Reunited With Son Nahko Bear
Dawn Schiller for CrixeoA human trafficking survivor and her firstborn found each other and made peace with their painful past, inspiring the revolutionary music of Nahko Bear.
After a ridiculous number of rings, she picks up.
“Elisia,” I say, exasperated. “Sis! Are you ready to do this interview?
“Hang on, Sis.” I just saw my client on the street and I gotta give him this lighter. Don’t ask.” She puts me on hold. Again.
I do know not to ask. We call each other sister, a title given to a close-knit circle of survivors of human trafficking. Whatever she’s doing, it’s important: she’s helping someone. I know because she regularly provides food, blankets, friendship and clinical counseling from her office at Central City Concern for Portland’s abused and downtrodden.
I also know she has a powerful story. Sold by her mother at 12, she later gave up her firstborn for adoption. Today many find inspiration from her son, Nahko Bear, water protector and front man for Nahko & Medicine for the People. This is her journey.
After a ridiculous number of rings, she picks up.
“Elisia,” I say, exasperated. “Sis! Are you ready to do this interview?
“Hang on, Sis.” I just saw my client on the street and I gotta give him this lighter. Don’t ask.” She puts me on hold. Again.
I do know not to ask. We call each other sister, a title given to a close-knit circle of survivors of human trafficking. Whatever she’s doing, it’s important: she’s helping someone. I know because she regularly provides food, blankets, friendship and clinical counseling from her office at Central City Concern for Portland’s abused and downtrodden.
I also know she has a powerful story. Sold by her mother at 12, she later gave up her firstborn for adoption. Today many find inspiration from her son, Nahko Bear, water protector and front man for Nahko & Medicine for the People. This is her journey.
ELISIA AT THREE YEARS OLD WITH HER PARENTS. COURTESY OF ELISIA LOPEZ.
Feliza Helena Angcaya (Elisia Lopez) was born in San Diego, the last of 14 children born to Teresa Reed (Apache, Cherokee, Scottish and Irish) and Manuel Mendiola (Guamanian and Puerto Rican). From the age of about five, she understood why strange men came over to sleep with her mother. On her 13th birthday, she was initiated into that hellacious world of intergenerational trauma.
Feliza Helena Angcaya (Elisia Lopez) was born in San Diego, the last of 14 children born to Teresa Reed (Apache, Cherokee, Scottish and Irish) and Manuel Mendiola (Guamanian and Puerto Rican). From the age of about five, she understood why strange men came over to sleep with her mother. On her 13th birthday, she was initiated into that hellacious world of intergenerational trauma.
ELISIA AT 12, THE YEAR SHE WAS SOLD TO ALVIN FOR MARRIAGE. COURTESY OF ELISIA LOPEZ.
I thought Mom was having a birthday party for me at the beach, but it was more like everyone from the bar showed up. She told me to go with her friend Alvin to get more ice. The realization crashed in, and I couldn’t breathe. I was a virgin and knew what Mom had done.
We walked for the longest time along the sand. The next thing I remember is waking up bloody and in terrible pain. I walked back to the party and found everyone passed-out drunk. I woke Mom and told her something had happened. She told me I needed to shower. That was it.
After that, Mom invited Alvin over constantly. I would panic and lock myself in the bathroom. I fought him every time, but he always caught me, and…well, I know now it was rape. That was how I became pregnant with my first son, Nahko.
By the time I was seven months along, we’d moved to Portland. I was 14 and in 9th grade. There were complications, and I gave birth via C-section two months early.
I thought Mom was having a birthday party for me at the beach, but it was more like everyone from the bar showed up. She told me to go with her friend Alvin to get more ice. The realization crashed in, and I couldn’t breathe. I was a virgin and knew what Mom had done.
We walked for the longest time along the sand. The next thing I remember is waking up bloody and in terrible pain. I walked back to the party and found everyone passed-out drunk. I woke Mom and told her something had happened. She told me I needed to shower. That was it.
After that, Mom invited Alvin over constantly. I would panic and lock myself in the bathroom. I fought him every time, but he always caught me, and…well, I know now it was rape. That was how I became pregnant with my first son, Nahko.
By the time I was seven months along, we’d moved to Portland. I was 14 and in 9th grade. There were complications, and I gave birth via C-section two months early.
ELISIA AT 14 WITH TWO-WEEK-OLD JOEL (NAHKO). COURTESY OF ELISIA LOPEZ.
I named him Joel, and even though I struggled to deal with the violence of his father, I loved him. I tried hard to take care of him, but I didn’t have the resources or support. I couldn’t go to school, and the trauma of the sexual abuse was too much.
After nine months, I broke. I saw no other way out but to die, so in my child mind, I decided to hang myself. But just as I had the rope around my neck in the basement, the phone rang. A social worker had found a family to adopt Nahko. I look back on that moment now and see the intervention of my ancestors — how that exact moment shifted the life course both for me and for Nahko.
I told the social worker, “I just want to spend one last night with him.” I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I wanted to give him a good life, to save him from what I knew life would be for him otherwise. And as much as it broke my heart, I knew allowing another family to raise him was the only way.
My life would not get better. I passed through 10 to 15 different foster homes and was abused in some. I was resentful, full of anger. I hung out on the streets and in youth detention centers, and it didn’t take long for a pimp to stake his claim on me.
Like many women and girls trafficked for sex, I did jail time for solicitation/prostitution but, of course, never ratted on my pimp. Back then I knew not to trust anybody. I knew many “upstanding” and “good” people were buying me for sex. I hated my pimp, but he told me he was taking care of me, and I believed him.
At 16 I became pregnant with my daughter Mimi. My pimp was so furious he stalked and beat me with a baseball bat. I was terrified. I begged the cops to protect me, but they couldn’t. He was eventually arrested for unrelated crimes.
I wanted to keep Mimi. I couldn’t bear losing another child.
Mom babysat while I went to “work.” Like she taught me, I walked the track on 82nd and Union in Portland. For years this was my life. I gave birth to Kaleena at 18 and Rique at 20 and always, with Mom’s help, went back out on the street.
So there I was, three babies and my mom, who was now older and disabled. I had to put a roof over their heads, put food on the table. I found a bar to work from and continued the cycle of trauma introduced to me by my mom — I became her.
Again my ancestors stepped in. One night this guy, Jose, saw me walking the track. He’d just moved here and didn’t know where he was or what I was doing. When he asked me out on a “real” date, I was shocked. I didn’t believe he liked me for me until he walked me to my door after the date and shook my hand in parting.
Soon we became friends, then roommates. When he asked me to marry him, I said, “Are you nuts? You wouldn’t want to marry me.”
He said, “I love you and your kids, so why not?”
It took a while. I didn’t want my kids to be hurt again. One day I watched him sitting on the floor playing Chutes & Ladders with my kids and I thought, “Wow. So this is what a normal life is supposed to look like.” Finally I said yes, and in 1995 and I was officially off the streets.
I named him Joel, and even though I struggled to deal with the violence of his father, I loved him. I tried hard to take care of him, but I didn’t have the resources or support. I couldn’t go to school, and the trauma of the sexual abuse was too much.
After nine months, I broke. I saw no other way out but to die, so in my child mind, I decided to hang myself. But just as I had the rope around my neck in the basement, the phone rang. A social worker had found a family to adopt Nahko. I look back on that moment now and see the intervention of my ancestors — how that exact moment shifted the life course both for me and for Nahko.
I told the social worker, “I just want to spend one last night with him.” I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I wanted to give him a good life, to save him from what I knew life would be for him otherwise. And as much as it broke my heart, I knew allowing another family to raise him was the only way.
My life would not get better. I passed through 10 to 15 different foster homes and was abused in some. I was resentful, full of anger. I hung out on the streets and in youth detention centers, and it didn’t take long for a pimp to stake his claim on me.
Like many women and girls trafficked for sex, I did jail time for solicitation/prostitution but, of course, never ratted on my pimp. Back then I knew not to trust anybody. I knew many “upstanding” and “good” people were buying me for sex. I hated my pimp, but he told me he was taking care of me, and I believed him.
At 16 I became pregnant with my daughter Mimi. My pimp was so furious he stalked and beat me with a baseball bat. I was terrified. I begged the cops to protect me, but they couldn’t. He was eventually arrested for unrelated crimes.
I wanted to keep Mimi. I couldn’t bear losing another child.
Mom babysat while I went to “work.” Like she taught me, I walked the track on 82nd and Union in Portland. For years this was my life. I gave birth to Kaleena at 18 and Rique at 20 and always, with Mom’s help, went back out on the street.
So there I was, three babies and my mom, who was now older and disabled. I had to put a roof over their heads, put food on the table. I found a bar to work from and continued the cycle of trauma introduced to me by my mom — I became her.
Again my ancestors stepped in. One night this guy, Jose, saw me walking the track. He’d just moved here and didn’t know where he was or what I was doing. When he asked me out on a “real” date, I was shocked. I didn’t believe he liked me for me until he walked me to my door after the date and shook my hand in parting.
Soon we became friends, then roommates. When he asked me to marry him, I said, “Are you nuts? You wouldn’t want to marry me.”
He said, “I love you and your kids, so why not?”
It took a while. I didn’t want my kids to be hurt again. One day I watched him sitting on the floor playing Chutes & Ladders with my kids and I thought, “Wow. So this is what a normal life is supposed to look like.” Finally I said yes, and in 1995 and I was officially off the streets.
ELISIA AND HUSBAND JOSE. COURTESY OF ELISIA LOPEZ.
Marriage gave me the support I needed to walk a different path. My ancestors knew that.
In 1998 we had Jose Jr.
Doors began to open. I got my GED and a job at the Department of Human Services. I was doing my best to find self-worth. Another door appeared, and I was accepted into a two-year mental health human service program.
It was in those years that I began to understand my own story, my mother’s mental illness and our family’s intergenerational abuse. I’d struggled for years with paralyzing anxiety, fear and depression. But now I felt like someone had put me under a hot lamp that caused the years of terrible memories to come bubbling to the surface. When I graduated, I thought, “I’m done with education.”
But my therapist encouraged me to go further and gave me strength to believe in myself. I enrolled in Concordia University’s social work program. There, I became exposed to theories like systems of oppression, social learning and psychosocial development as well as social work practice models around cognitive behavioral therapy and crisis intervention.
After receiving my bachelor’s in social work, to the surprise of my family and myself, I realized I wasn’t done. I graduated with my master’s in social work from Portland State University in 2015. Education was truth to me. It opened my mind and my heart. It gave me the language I needed to unpack my dysfunctional past and the tools to heal and break my traumatic familial patterns.
Marriage gave me the support I needed to walk a different path. My ancestors knew that.
In 1998 we had Jose Jr.
Doors began to open. I got my GED and a job at the Department of Human Services. I was doing my best to find self-worth. Another door appeared, and I was accepted into a two-year mental health human service program.
It was in those years that I began to understand my own story, my mother’s mental illness and our family’s intergenerational abuse. I’d struggled for years with paralyzing anxiety, fear and depression. But now I felt like someone had put me under a hot lamp that caused the years of terrible memories to come bubbling to the surface. When I graduated, I thought, “I’m done with education.”
But my therapist encouraged me to go further and gave me strength to believe in myself. I enrolled in Concordia University’s social work program. There, I became exposed to theories like systems of oppression, social learning and psychosocial development as well as social work practice models around cognitive behavioral therapy and crisis intervention.
After receiving my bachelor’s in social work, to the surprise of my family and myself, I realized I wasn’t done. I graduated with my master’s in social work from Portland State University in 2015. Education was truth to me. It opened my mind and my heart. It gave me the language I needed to unpack my dysfunctional past and the tools to heal and break my traumatic familial patterns.
NAHKO PERFORMING WITH HIS BAND. PHOTO BY EVOKE EMOTION PHOTOGRAPHY.
In 2006 Elisia’s firstborn, Nahko, came back into her life via the website adoption.com. He shared some of that journey with me:
My first memory of my mom was getting a present from her when I was about five. I didn’t know I was adopted then. I thought maybe I had a “mom” who was like an auntie or something. Nobody really mentioned her to me again until I was about 17. I always understood that she just couldn’t take care of me. When I was 18, old enough to consent, I was given letters my mom had written me from when I was nine months to five years old. They were sweet and endearing. They said things like “I hope you’re not mad at me” and “Come find me one day.” It moved me. I wanted to see her, but I was nervous and wondered if she was still struggling or hurting from her past. I mean, I knew something like abuse had happened to her but didn’t really know what trafficking was then.
I knew my grandmother was not mentally stable. Still, I have a lot of empathy for her struggle in that era. It was rough to be a native woman then…still is. She was denied her heritage and given cyclical abuse to pass down to her children instead. It’s what she got, too, and that is sad. She suffered. And me, as a child of something that was, well, not consensual and guided by the hands of my grandmother… I have to accept it. It was wrong, but also I wouldn’t be here right now if it didn’t happen either. There is spirit in that. My grandmother’s life was a battle, and she passed away never understanding peace. I hope she found it in the afterlife.
I showed up at Mom’s house Christmas 2007 and stayed a month. I focused on spending time with my mom and building relationships with my brothers and sisters. I don’t harbor any resentment toward my mom — I never have. It was destiny. When I was younger, I didn’t understand the abuse from my grandmother. My anger centered on my dad. I had come up with all these crazy, malicious ways that I was going to find him, be some kind of karma to him. Instead my mom helped me process closure around him, and I ended up forgiving him. She gave me that enormous gift.
There’s so much strength in my mom’s story. There’s so much of an example of being able to come from where she did and turn her life around and forgive. She is inspiring and definitely has inspired me and my music. She is one of the strongest women I know. Her resilience, her positivity, is a beacon to many people — people search for a light in her face. It gives them hope. We are mother and son again, and we like each other. To me, she is MOM.
In 2006 Elisia’s firstborn, Nahko, came back into her life via the website adoption.com. He shared some of that journey with me:
My first memory of my mom was getting a present from her when I was about five. I didn’t know I was adopted then. I thought maybe I had a “mom” who was like an auntie or something. Nobody really mentioned her to me again until I was about 17. I always understood that she just couldn’t take care of me. When I was 18, old enough to consent, I was given letters my mom had written me from when I was nine months to five years old. They were sweet and endearing. They said things like “I hope you’re not mad at me” and “Come find me one day.” It moved me. I wanted to see her, but I was nervous and wondered if she was still struggling or hurting from her past. I mean, I knew something like abuse had happened to her but didn’t really know what trafficking was then.
I knew my grandmother was not mentally stable. Still, I have a lot of empathy for her struggle in that era. It was rough to be a native woman then…still is. She was denied her heritage and given cyclical abuse to pass down to her children instead. It’s what she got, too, and that is sad. She suffered. And me, as a child of something that was, well, not consensual and guided by the hands of my grandmother… I have to accept it. It was wrong, but also I wouldn’t be here right now if it didn’t happen either. There is spirit in that. My grandmother’s life was a battle, and she passed away never understanding peace. I hope she found it in the afterlife.
I showed up at Mom’s house Christmas 2007 and stayed a month. I focused on spending time with my mom and building relationships with my brothers and sisters. I don’t harbor any resentment toward my mom — I never have. It was destiny. When I was younger, I didn’t understand the abuse from my grandmother. My anger centered on my dad. I had come up with all these crazy, malicious ways that I was going to find him, be some kind of karma to him. Instead my mom helped me process closure around him, and I ended up forgiving him. She gave me that enormous gift.
There’s so much strength in my mom’s story. There’s so much of an example of being able to come from where she did and turn her life around and forgive. She is inspiring and definitely has inspired me and my music. She is one of the strongest women I know. Her resilience, her positivity, is a beacon to many people — people search for a light in her face. It gives them hope. We are mother and son again, and we like each other. To me, she is MOM.
COURTESY OF ELISIA LOPEZ.
I look at Elisia’s face as this video chat interview draws to a close. She’s starting to look weary from traveling through so many years of pain, and I ask for her closing thoughts:
Back when I was 12, there was no preventative or after-care treatment for survivors of human trafficking. January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, and it does my heart good to be a survivor leader helping to make that change today. My greatest strengths are the closeness I have with my survivor sisters and, honestly, my husband. They always told me, “I believe in you. I think you can do this. You are worthy.” My proudest moment was walking across the stage to receive my master’s. I was able to say, “Fuck everyone who said I wasn’t worth it. I did this. Not my body — me.”
I look at Elisia’s face as this video chat interview draws to a close. She’s starting to look weary from traveling through so many years of pain, and I ask for her closing thoughts:
Back when I was 12, there was no preventative or after-care treatment for survivors of human trafficking. January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, and it does my heart good to be a survivor leader helping to make that change today. My greatest strengths are the closeness I have with my survivor sisters and, honestly, my husband. They always told me, “I believe in you. I think you can do this. You are worthy.” My proudest moment was walking across the stage to receive my master’s. I was able to say, “Fuck everyone who said I wasn’t worth it. I did this. Not my body — me.”
COURTESY OF ELISIA LOPEZ.
Today I am so much different. I believe in the philosophy of love, which is quite a miracle if you think about it. I practice forgiveness — of others and of myself — and have humbly asked my children to forgive me, just as I’ve worked to forgive my own mother. I can see today that it wasn’t my mom who raised me; it was her mental illness that ran the house. I believe my ancestors guided me to this realization. I needed to understand her as a human being, so I could have compassion, forgive and love her, as she was never able to show me. I always say, “Don’t judge it until you can understand it.”
Nahko lovingly calls his mother a BAB (Bad Ass Bitch), and she can be — on the outside. He tells me how impressed he is as he watches her embrace his band and the many fans and social justice activists drawn to his powerful music. But what I also see is the heart of a young girl, a woman, a sister, a mother who is on a long journey to heal from the betrayal of her own sacred mother and reconcile the scattered pieces of her life into humanity again. Love wins.
Article by Dawn Schiller first published here: Crixeo
READ ON ...
-------
David Bohm – Post Modern Gnostic
Reinventing the Sacred in the Age of the Cosmos
Today I am so much different. I believe in the philosophy of love, which is quite a miracle if you think about it. I practice forgiveness — of others and of myself — and have humbly asked my children to forgive me, just as I’ve worked to forgive my own mother. I can see today that it wasn’t my mom who raised me; it was her mental illness that ran the house. I believe my ancestors guided me to this realization. I needed to understand her as a human being, so I could have compassion, forgive and love her, as she was never able to show me. I always say, “Don’t judge it until you can understand it.”
Nahko lovingly calls his mother a BAB (Bad Ass Bitch), and she can be — on the outside. He tells me how impressed he is as he watches her embrace his band and the many fans and social justice activists drawn to his powerful music. But what I also see is the heart of a young girl, a woman, a sister, a mother who is on a long journey to heal from the betrayal of her own sacred mother and reconcile the scattered pieces of her life into humanity again. Love wins.
READ ON ...
-------
David Bohm – Post Modern Gnostic
Reinventing the Sacred in the Age of the Cosmos
David AndersonFirst a quote from the January 20, 1961 Inaugural address of John F. Kennedy.
He ended it with the words:
She had spent over six years documenting how humans were using powerful chemical pesticides before knowing the full extent of their environmental harm.
The audience at the Kennedy Inauguration was largely Christian. They saw their God as the intervener, also the provider of the American largess they so much enjoyed. But the world was rapidly changing. It was about to take that largess away from them. Rachel Carson had given them the first clue. The greatest industrial nation in the world was dangerously altering the ecological systems of Planet Earth. Post Enlightenment scientism was not working; nor was Abrahamic belief. And, many of the Christian faith were beginning to understand that Intercession will not be coming from a heavenly deity. Nor will Apocalypse be the answer. For species survival we are on our own.
Since then the facts have become the more clear: CO2 in the atmosphere now at 400 parts per million and moving higher, Methane gas beginning to bubble in the Arctic that could lead to a runaway methane feedback hydrate loop, Fish in our lakes and oceans poisoned by Mercury, Acidification of our oceans threatening to wipe out large populations of phytoplankton that are the basis of food webs supporting fish dolphins whales and other marine life, Increasing autism among our children and cancer among our adults, Melting Arctic and Antarctica ice caps bringing about rising ocean levels that will within the next several generations inundate coastal cities around the world, Glaciers continuing to melt in the Alps and Himalayas, Aquifer levels continuing to drop under vital agricultural lands, Droughts vast wildfires and unprecedented “Frankenstorm’s” occurring with increasing frequency, And the list goes on.
So now over fifty years after the Carson book, many Americans are asking the question; how are we to proceed? How can we be sure of our continuance on Planet Earth?
As they try to find an answer that question, they are beginning to realize that we humans are all alone in a vast Universe and change can only come by way and through and inner search that brings the consciousness of everyone into the consciousness of the cosmos.
How can we begin this search?
Let us start with the insights of the scientist and Einstein colleague David Bohm (1917-1982). In many ways his solution was one we have over the ages called Gnostic. If we examine his thought process carefully, we find that he was in many respects a modern Gnostic.
Inner search leading to participation in what he called Cosmic Consciousness was his way to frame an answer to the problem.
Like the early Gnostics, and those today; David Bohm saw human progression essentially as a struggle to gain wholeness, to achieve fullness of being, to discover divinity not outside in some separate dimension but within the human psyche.
He believed that space and time has a deeper level of objective reality than is understood by most humans. He saw space and time not as a reflection of a Deity, but of as a reflection of cosmic intelligence.
Bohm described this intelligence as a “holiness” (being beyond what can be grasped in thought) present in the continuing process of the cosmos moving into higher forms of complexity. He wrote that this holiness is a pure and active intelligence. He further described it as reality.
He believed that the individual who uses his/her inner energy and his/her human intelligence can participate and be a part of this reality.
He would have agreed with Jesus when Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas discovered in 1945 in Egypt at Nag Hammadi: (Remains declared heretical by the Roman Catholic Church)
(41) Whoever has something in his hand will receive more, and whoever has nothing will be deprived of even the little that he has.
He believed that collectively we as a species on Planet earth have reached the point where our universal consciousness is close to, as he phrased it: entering into a stage of cosmic transformation and “putting out the fire.” He saw some of us breaking through to an understanding of this cosmic existential reality.
The reality is now plainly visible. We Post Modern humans suddenly find ourselves living in a state of planetary unsustainability. As the agricultural and then industrial revolution took hold, by ignoring the sacredness of Nature and therefore the need to define Homo sapiens in relation to it, the legitimacy of its exploitation was given full reign.
David Bohm did find some encouraging news. He saw increasingly large numbers of us breaking through to an understanding of cosmic existential reality.
To follow his reasoning; let us begin with what he referred to as the most essential building-block of matter, the particle. He considered its understanding an abstraction. He saw the whole cosmos as a singularity of particle ensembles, all together existent in a series of stages of enfoldment and unfoldment, intermingling and interpenetrating throughout the whole of time and space. He believed that at the very depths of the ground of their existence is energy. He described the cosmos as an “immense background of energy” with the energy of this background likened to one whole and unbroken “holomovement.” He described holomovement as a cosmic consciousness carrying on the Implicate Order of the Universe.
From this holomovement emerges the action/reaction between what Bohm called the Implicate and Explicate order.
Bohm believed there is a cosmic interiority within the holomovement. It results in Implicate Order. From that order comes matter. Matter brings forth a process of enfoldment in endless feedback cycles, creating an infinite variety of manifest forms of materiality. Bohm was of the opinion that fundamental Cosmic Intelligence is the Player in this process; intelligence engaged in endless experimentation and creativity. He defined this as the Cosmic Mind, a Mind moving cyclically onward.
Where do we as humans on this Planet fit into the Bohm equation? He believed that those who use their inner energy and intelligence can be at one with this cosmic mind and its Implicate Order.
He suggested that in our Post Modern World now for the first time in human history one can observe indications of a shaking off of, as he termed it, the “pollution of the ages” (wrong worldviews that propagate ignorance) by way of the beginning of a trusting relationship with one another. He saw this as having the capability to generate the immense power needed to ignite a cosmic consciousness in our species toward a new order.
It was Bohm’s thesis that the ignorance of humanity prior to this Age has been a matter of closedmindedness. He considered closedmindedness the “darkness in the human brain,” that is human ego closed to the Universal Mind and to a supreme intelligence that communicates through the mode of insight.
He believed that our species will eventually be released from this darkness upon the completion of what he called a cosmic “noogenesis.” This term refers to the movement of all the elements of the cosmos, including the biological human, toward ultimate totality, Bohm noted that as humanity takes part in this process, it will be changed by a consciousness inherent in that reality. He intuited that the human person, and humankind collectively upon accomplishing successful noogenesis, will come to fullness within the greater dimension of reality; the Cosmic Apex
Using the analogy of the transformation of the atom ultimately into the power of chain reaction, Bohm believed that those individuals who use their inner energy and intelligence can be in a position to transform humankind and that altogether after two million years or more of sapiens history humans can realize that power and reach a new consciousness.
Are we about to shake off Bohm’s “pollution of the ages”? Has the “chain reaction” begun? There are signs that it is moving in the right direction.
In recent years scientists throughout the world have been coming together and defining with precision the biosphere destruction. And as for a necessary breakthrough in human consciousness, well before the Rachel Carson book, the psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961) was in a sense echoing David Bohm, speaking to us about what he called “Individuation,” defined as a process of transformation whereby the personal and collective unconscious are opened.
Also, movement toward cosmic consciousness since her book can be seen more recently in Pope Francis’ LAUDATO SI in 2015 and the COP21 meeting in Paris the same year. All of this gives us hope that a paradigm shift is in the making.
But the question remains; how close are we to having finally solved the Homo sapiens survival problem?
We remain far from it.
Visit David’s Blog Inquiry Abraham
READ ON ...
-------
A Treasure-trove of music by: William L. (Bill) Wallace
NEW! Finding the perfect song, hymn, resource and worship material is now easy with these newly created indexes to Bill's collections:Boundless Life, Sing Young, Sing Joyfully, Seasoned Celebration, Festive Worship and Celebrating Mystery - all for free.
READ ON ...
-------
Liturgy Selection
He ended it with the words:
“…. asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
They were prescient words: “here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” Was the new President aware the moment he was speaking of the need for an American response to the ecological challenges facing the Nation? We do not know. However, it all became clear one year later when Rachel Carson published her seminal book Silent Spring. Along with many other Americans, the President too read the book. It had become an instant best-seller and the most provocative book in decades. It began the environmental movement in America.She had spent over six years documenting how humans were using powerful chemical pesticides before knowing the full extent of their environmental harm.
The audience at the Kennedy Inauguration was largely Christian. They saw their God as the intervener, also the provider of the American largess they so much enjoyed. But the world was rapidly changing. It was about to take that largess away from them. Rachel Carson had given them the first clue. The greatest industrial nation in the world was dangerously altering the ecological systems of Planet Earth. Post Enlightenment scientism was not working; nor was Abrahamic belief. And, many of the Christian faith were beginning to understand that Intercession will not be coming from a heavenly deity. Nor will Apocalypse be the answer. For species survival we are on our own.
Since then the facts have become the more clear: CO2 in the atmosphere now at 400 parts per million and moving higher, Methane gas beginning to bubble in the Arctic that could lead to a runaway methane feedback hydrate loop, Fish in our lakes and oceans poisoned by Mercury, Acidification of our oceans threatening to wipe out large populations of phytoplankton that are the basis of food webs supporting fish dolphins whales and other marine life, Increasing autism among our children and cancer among our adults, Melting Arctic and Antarctica ice caps bringing about rising ocean levels that will within the next several generations inundate coastal cities around the world, Glaciers continuing to melt in the Alps and Himalayas, Aquifer levels continuing to drop under vital agricultural lands, Droughts vast wildfires and unprecedented “Frankenstorm’s” occurring with increasing frequency, And the list goes on.
So now over fifty years after the Carson book, many Americans are asking the question; how are we to proceed? How can we be sure of our continuance on Planet Earth?
As they try to find an answer that question, they are beginning to realize that we humans are all alone in a vast Universe and change can only come by way and through and inner search that brings the consciousness of everyone into the consciousness of the cosmos.
How can we begin this search?
Let us start with the insights of the scientist and Einstein colleague David Bohm (1917-1982). In many ways his solution was one we have over the ages called Gnostic. If we examine his thought process carefully, we find that he was in many respects a modern Gnostic.
Inner search leading to participation in what he called Cosmic Consciousness was his way to frame an answer to the problem.
Like the early Gnostics, and those today; David Bohm saw human progression essentially as a struggle to gain wholeness, to achieve fullness of being, to discover divinity not outside in some separate dimension but within the human psyche.
He believed that space and time has a deeper level of objective reality than is understood by most humans. He saw space and time not as a reflection of a Deity, but of as a reflection of cosmic intelligence.
Bohm described this intelligence as a “holiness” (being beyond what can be grasped in thought) present in the continuing process of the cosmos moving into higher forms of complexity. He wrote that this holiness is a pure and active intelligence. He further described it as reality.
He believed that the individual who uses his/her inner energy and his/her human intelligence can participate and be a part of this reality.
He would have agreed with Jesus when Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas discovered in 1945 in Egypt at Nag Hammadi: (Remains declared heretical by the Roman Catholic Church)
(41) Whoever has something in his hand will receive more, and whoever has nothing will be deprived of even the little that he has.
He believed that collectively we as a species on Planet earth have reached the point where our universal consciousness is close to, as he phrased it: entering into a stage of cosmic transformation and “putting out the fire.” He saw some of us breaking through to an understanding of this cosmic existential reality.
The reality is now plainly visible. We Post Modern humans suddenly find ourselves living in a state of planetary unsustainability. As the agricultural and then industrial revolution took hold, by ignoring the sacredness of Nature and therefore the need to define Homo sapiens in relation to it, the legitimacy of its exploitation was given full reign.
David Bohm did find some encouraging news. He saw increasingly large numbers of us breaking through to an understanding of cosmic existential reality.
To follow his reasoning; let us begin with what he referred to as the most essential building-block of matter, the particle. He considered its understanding an abstraction. He saw the whole cosmos as a singularity of particle ensembles, all together existent in a series of stages of enfoldment and unfoldment, intermingling and interpenetrating throughout the whole of time and space. He believed that at the very depths of the ground of their existence is energy. He described the cosmos as an “immense background of energy” with the energy of this background likened to one whole and unbroken “holomovement.” He described holomovement as a cosmic consciousness carrying on the Implicate Order of the Universe.
From this holomovement emerges the action/reaction between what Bohm called the Implicate and Explicate order.
Bohm believed there is a cosmic interiority within the holomovement. It results in Implicate Order. From that order comes matter. Matter brings forth a process of enfoldment in endless feedback cycles, creating an infinite variety of manifest forms of materiality. Bohm was of the opinion that fundamental Cosmic Intelligence is the Player in this process; intelligence engaged in endless experimentation and creativity. He defined this as the Cosmic Mind, a Mind moving cyclically onward.
Where do we as humans on this Planet fit into the Bohm equation? He believed that those who use their inner energy and intelligence can be at one with this cosmic mind and its Implicate Order.
He suggested that in our Post Modern World now for the first time in human history one can observe indications of a shaking off of, as he termed it, the “pollution of the ages” (wrong worldviews that propagate ignorance) by way of the beginning of a trusting relationship with one another. He saw this as having the capability to generate the immense power needed to ignite a cosmic consciousness in our species toward a new order.
It was Bohm’s thesis that the ignorance of humanity prior to this Age has been a matter of closedmindedness. He considered closedmindedness the “darkness in the human brain,” that is human ego closed to the Universal Mind and to a supreme intelligence that communicates through the mode of insight.
He believed that our species will eventually be released from this darkness upon the completion of what he called a cosmic “noogenesis.” This term refers to the movement of all the elements of the cosmos, including the biological human, toward ultimate totality, Bohm noted that as humanity takes part in this process, it will be changed by a consciousness inherent in that reality. He intuited that the human person, and humankind collectively upon accomplishing successful noogenesis, will come to fullness within the greater dimension of reality; the Cosmic Apex
Using the analogy of the transformation of the atom ultimately into the power of chain reaction, Bohm believed that those individuals who use their inner energy and intelligence can be in a position to transform humankind and that altogether after two million years or more of sapiens history humans can realize that power and reach a new consciousness.
Are we about to shake off Bohm’s “pollution of the ages”? Has the “chain reaction” begun? There are signs that it is moving in the right direction.
In recent years scientists throughout the world have been coming together and defining with precision the biosphere destruction. And as for a necessary breakthrough in human consciousness, well before the Rachel Carson book, the psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961) was in a sense echoing David Bohm, speaking to us about what he called “Individuation,” defined as a process of transformation whereby the personal and collective unconscious are opened.
Also, movement toward cosmic consciousness since her book can be seen more recently in Pope Francis’ LAUDATO SI in 2015 and the COP21 meeting in Paris the same year. All of this gives us hope that a paradigm shift is in the making.
But the question remains; how close are we to having finally solved the Homo sapiens survival problem?
We remain far from it.
Visit David’s Blog Inquiry Abraham
READ ON ...
-------
A Treasure-trove of music by: William L. (Bill) Wallace
NEW! Finding the perfect song, hymn, resource and worship material is now easy with these newly created indexes to Bill's collections:Boundless Life, Sing Young, Sing Joyfully, Seasoned Celebration, Festive Worship and Celebrating Mystery - all for free.
READ ON ...
-------
Liturgy Selection
Lent LiturgyMay this time of Lent be a time for introspective meditation, letting go, acceptance, and rebirth.
The word Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for Spring, which is derived from a verb meaning: to lengthen. Lent comes in the Spring when the days become noticeably longer. This annual season of fasting, prayer, and penitence has been observed by the Western Church since the first century after Christ, although it has not always been forty days long. In more recent times it has been kept forty days, after the example of Moses and Elijah, and to commemorate the forty days of fasting and prayer that Jesus spent in the wilderness.
Lent is a season of spiritual growth, a time for progressive unfoldment.
How can we best be attentive to the spiritual journey during this time of grieving, introspection, seeking, and redemption?
Can we open a channel of intelligent communication with the silent forces at the depths of our being? Can we give power to the thoughts and words that flow from those depths and awaken to a higher consciousness and a connection to the Spirit that is within all?
Blessings to you during this season of Lent. May it bring you joy and peace.
Lent: A 40 Day Fast
INTRODUCTION
Who are we? Jesus responded to the Jews preparing to stone him: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods?'” John 10:34
Lent: A 40 Day Fast by Nancy Detweiler
INTRODUCTION
Who are we? Jesus responded to the Jews preparing to stone him: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods?'” John 10:34
Jesus is quoting Psalm 82:6 … “I say, ‘You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you.”
“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…. So God created humankind in his image.” Genesis 1:26-27 If God made us in God’s image and likeness, then we are child gods!
So why do we think we are dust?
As the Psalmist lamented: “I say, ‘You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.” Psalm 82:6-7 The Psalmist explains why we think we are dust in verse 5: “They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk in darkness….” We have allowed religions to tell us we are nothing but dust. It is time we all learn to think for ourselves and to do our own research into Truth.
WHY OBSERVE A 40 DAY FAST? Quotes from: Charles Fillmore, KEEP A TRUE LENT
“Moses, Elijah, & Jesus observed a 40 day period of prayer and fasting as a preparation for spiritual work. Moses received the 10 Commandments on Mt. Sinai at the conclusion of his fast. Elijah talkied with God on Mt. Horeb at the conclusion of his period of prayer and fasting. Jesus began his great spiritual ministry at the close of his fast in the wilderness.”
Lent = “a preparation for the resurrection of the mind from the darkness of its sins, doubts, and false beliefs into the light of understanding.”
“Fast from all unworthy thought and feast on the good and the true.”
TRUE FASTING – “When we withdraw our attention, interest, and support from the false and the unworthy, this is true fasting. When we give the same attention, interest, and support to the enduring good, we are feasting on the things of the Spirit, and this is true prayer. When we have truly fasted in the Christ way [the Way of Love] we have increased our ability to respond to God’s good will.”
“One of the most valuable ways of observing the Lenten season is to fast from (loose and let go) the belief that men or nations can stand in the way of God’s good will for man. Now is the time to affirm the power of the Christ Spirit [the Spirit of Divine Love] indwelling in all men everywhere and influencing their thoughts, words, and actions to work for the good of the whole.”
“Divine love sees no distinction among persons. It is Principle and it feels its own perfection everywhere. It feels the same in the heart of the sinner as it does in the heart of the saint. When we let the Truth of Being into our heart and pull down all walls of separation we shall feel the flow of infinite love that Jesus felt…. Through our sense of oneness with the All-Good, the greatest possible sense of security is realized; therefore, all fear is readily and completely cast out…. [The disciple] John emphasizes the fact that in order to love God we must necessarily love our fellow man. A love that is adulterated in any degree by hatred for anything or anybody is not pure enough to discern the great love of the Infinite, which unifies all men.”
LENT IS A TIME FOR EVALUATING OUR SPIRITUAL GROWTH PROCESS FOR FASTING FROM THE NEGATIVE AND FEASTING ON THE POSITIVE.
LENT IS A TIME TO ACHIEVE A GREATER DEGREE OF BALANCE BETWEEN OUR 12 POWERS/QUALITIES.
6TH DAY OF LENT – 40 DAY FAST
Lent began on February 25, 2009 — Ash Wednesday, so I am getting a late start on these Lenten devotionals The word “fast” does not simply relate to doing without food. The more spiritually enhancing fast is to put aside the thought patterns that are not beneficial to your well-being. Determine what you are continually saying to yourself that is self-defeating, like …. I am not worthy … I am not well … I can’t find a job … I don’t qualify … I cannot afford … . On and on we go, speaking negatively about ourselves. This is self-defeating behavior.
Lent is a time when we can unite with the energies of millions on this planet observing a time of inner reflection. Ask: What thought patterns do I need to transform in order to conform to God’s thoughts about me? Remember we are ALL God’s children, thus child gods. Just as your child must learn to walk as we walk, so we–as God’s children–must learn to think as God thinks.
In order to think as God thinks about us, we must recognize: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” Matthew 6:8
Therefore, if your present need is a job or better health … whatever, practice the following:
INSTEAD OF telling yourself: Jobs are scarce … I don’t qualify for the jobs that are available………..
USE THIS LENTEN 40 DAYS FAST TO AFFIRM IN FAITH: “God is leading me to the perfect job and I give thanks.” OR “Perfect health is mine and I give thanks.”
Remember God ALREADY KNOWS YOUR NEED and has already prepared to supply it. “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you HAVE RECEIVED IT, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:24
YOUR JOB IS TO LISTEN and follow through on your intuitive guidance, while maintaining your thoughts on the positive affirmations that enhance your well-being. You must do the foot work … whatever that takes.
LENT is a 40 day fast from feeling that you are separated from God and realizing that YOU AND GOD ARE PARTNERS … GOD KNOWS THE WAY … YOU ARE FOLLOWING HIS GUIDANCE.
7TH DAY OF LENT – “THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS INSIDE OF YOU.” LUKE 17:21
The Divine Self (Elizabeth Claire Prophet)
One of the most difficult concepts to grasp is Jesus’ teaching: “The kingdom of God is inside of you.” For that reason I am posting this Divine Self Illustration … the most comforting and enlightening depiction of this teaching I have seen.
This all important teaching—that the kingdom of God is inside of you—holds the capacity to transform your entire life. We have been taught that God is separate from us, which leaves us feeling alone and helpless, especially when life seems to have turned us upside down with its traumas. The Greek word “entos” means both “inside” and “among.” Therefore, the kingdom of God—or God—is both inside of us and among us. This concept is illustrated by the white light in which you are standing, with another stream of white light flowing down into your heart from above. The purple light surrounding you represents the grace of God transmuting and cleansing you at your request. No negativity within you need be a permanent quality. God’s grace is always available.
For clarity, the three parts of yourself are displayed vertically … in reality, they are interpenetrated. The middle figure represents the mediator between your physical self and your indwelling God presence (the spark of divinity inside of you). This mediator is your Intuitive (or Higher) Mind through which you receive guidance from God … or for Christians, also from Jesus.
The top figure represents the “the kingdom of God inside of you” that is always present as a part of who you are. The circles of color represent “the treasures you have laid up in heaven.” See Matthew 6:19-21, in which Jesus taught: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The treasures you have laid up in heaven are a permanent part of you.
Meditating on this illustration of your Divine Self on a daily basis reminds you that you are truly God’s child and walk through life with your Heavenly Father’s loving white light enfolding you and permeating your being. As the Apostle Paul taught in Acts 17:28 — “For in Him we live and move and have our being.”
God is always inside of us and among (or surrounding) us! Let’s use this Lenten Season to firmly anchor this Truth within our conscious awareness. It can be a source of great comfort during the chaotic days ahead–as the old passes away and a “new Earth is born.”
8TH DAY OF LENT – 12 QUALITIES REQUIRED FOR THE CHRISTED CONSCIOUSNESS
The number 12 is one of the most sacred symbols in the Bible because it represents the achievement of wholeness that results in an expansion of consciousness into the higher realms of spirit. As we saw when Jesus’ disciples elected Matthias to take Judas’ place, it is essential to focus on 12 qualities symbolized by the 12 tribes, the 12 zodiac signs, and the 12 disciples.
In the words of Charles Fillmore, in LET’S KEEP A TRUE LENT, these 12 qualities are: faith, strength, wisdom, love, power, imagination, understanding, will, law of order, zeal, renunciation, and life.
The Lenten Season is a powerful time in which to evaluate ourselves in relationship to each of these 12 qualities. Today, we will focus on the 1ST QUALITY OF FAITH.
Quoting Fillmore: “FAITH is the perceiving power of the mind linked with a power to shape substance. It is spiritual assurance, the power to do the seemingly impossible. It is a force that draws to us our heart’s desire right out of the invisible spiritual substance.”
Faith is the means by which we follow Jesus’ instruction in Mark 11:24 — “So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you HAVE RECEIVED IT, and it will be yours.”
Quoting Fillmore: “Faith working in spiritual substance accomplishes all things. This is the faith that co-operates with creative law. Exercised in spiritual consciousness, it finds its abode, and without variation or disappointment it brings results that are seemingly miraculous. Faith in the reality of things spiritual develops the faith center in man’s brain. When the mental eye is illumined with faith, it sheds a radiance that hovers like a halo around the head and extends in lessening degree throughout the whole body. [In the words of Jesus], ‘When thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light.'” (Matthew 6:22)
On this 8th day of Lent affirm: “I have faith in the glorious infusion of the more abundant life of Christ vitalizing me. I am lifted up and healed.” —Fillmore, LET’S KEEP A TRUE LENT
Meditate on this affirmation until it becomes a part of your thought patterns. Whenever negative thoughts try to take over your mind, replace them by repeating this affirmation. The spoken word is much more powerful than repeating the affirmation silently.
ALWAYS END YOUR AFFIRMATION WITH “THANK YOU, GOD!” Visualize your life opening to the influx of God’s glorious gifts to you!
AMEN … SO IT IS!
To Read On, Click Here
Lent Liturgy
Week of February 19, 2017
May this time of Lent be a time for introspective meditation, letting go, acceptance, and rebirth.The word Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for Spring, which is derived from a verb meaning: to lengthen. Lent comes in the Spring when the days become noticeably longer. This annual season of fasting, prayer, and penitence has been observed by the Western Church since the first century after Christ, although it has not always been forty days long. In more recent times it has been kept forty days, after the example of Moses and Elijah, and to commemorate the forty days of fasting and prayer that Jesus spent in the wilderness.
Lent is a season of spiritual growth, a time for progressive unfoldment.
How can we best be attentive to the spiritual journey during this time of grieving, introspection, seeking, and redemption?
Can we open a channel of intelligent communication with the silent forces at the depths of our being? Can we give power to the thoughts and words that flow from those depths and awaken to a higher consciousness and a connection to the Spirit that is within all?
Blessings to you during this season of Lent. May it bring you joy and peace.
Lent: A 40 Day Fast
INTRODUCTION
Who are we? Jesus responded to the Jews preparing to stone him: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods?'” John 10:34
Lent: A 40 Day Fast by Nancy Detweiler
INTRODUCTION
Who are we? Jesus responded to the Jews preparing to stone him: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods?'” John 10:34
Jesus is quoting Psalm 82:6 … “I say, ‘You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you.”
“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…. So God created humankind in his image.” Genesis 1:26-27 If God made us in God’s image and likeness, then we are child gods!
So why do we think we are dust?
As the Psalmist lamented: “I say, ‘You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.” Psalm 82:6-7 The Psalmist explains why we think we are dust in verse 5: “They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk in darkness….” We have allowed religions to tell us we are nothing but dust. It is time we all learn to think for ourselves and to do our own research into Truth.
WHY OBSERVE A 40 DAY FAST? Quotes from: Charles Fillmore, KEEP A TRUE LENT
“Moses, Elijah, & Jesus observed a 40 day period of prayer and fasting as a preparation for spiritual work. Moses received the 10 Commandments on Mt. Sinai at the conclusion of his fast. Elijah talkied with God on Mt. Horeb at the conclusion of his period of prayer and fasting. Jesus began his great spiritual ministry at the close of his fast in the wilderness.”
Lent = “a preparation for the resurrection of the mind from the darkness of its sins, doubts, and false beliefs into the light of understanding.”
“Fast from all unworthy thought and feast on the good and the true.”
TRUE FASTING – “When we withdraw our attention, interest, and support from the false and the unworthy, this is true fasting. When we give the same attention, interest, and support to the enduring good, we are feasting on the things of the Spirit, and this is true prayer. When we have truly fasted in the Christ way [the Way of Love] we have increased our ability to respond to God’s good will.”
“One of the most valuable ways of observing the Lenten season is to fast from (loose and let go) the belief that men or nations can stand in the way of God’s good will for man. Now is the time to affirm the power of the Christ Spirit [the Spirit of Divine Love] indwelling in all men everywhere and influencing their thoughts, words, and actions to work for the good of the whole.”
“Divine love sees no distinction among persons. It is Principle and it feels its own perfection everywhere. It feels the same in the heart of the sinner as it does in the heart of the saint. When we let the Truth of Being into our heart and pull down all walls of separation we shall feel the flow of infinite love that Jesus felt…. Through our sense of oneness with the All-Good, the greatest possible sense of security is realized; therefore, all fear is readily and completely cast out…. [The disciple] John emphasizes the fact that in order to love God we must necessarily love our fellow man. A love that is adulterated in any degree by hatred for anything or anybody is not pure enough to discern the great love of the Infinite, which unifies all men.”
LENT IS A TIME FOR EVALUATING OUR SPIRITUAL GROWTH PROCESS FOR FASTING FROM THE NEGATIVE AND FEASTING ON THE POSITIVE.
LENT IS A TIME TO ACHIEVE A GREATER DEGREE OF BALANCE BETWEEN OUR 12 POWERS/QUALITIES.
6TH DAY OF LENT – 40 DAY FAST
Lent began on February 25, 2009 — Ash Wednesday, so I am getting a late start on these Lenten devotionals The word “fast” does not simply relate to doing without food. The more spiritually enhancing fast is to put aside the thought patterns that are not beneficial to your well-being. Determine what you are continually saying to yourself that is self-defeating, like …. I am not worthy … I am not well … I can’t find a job … I don’t qualify … I cannot afford … . On and on we go, speaking negatively about ourselves. This is self-defeating behavior.
Lent is a time when we can unite with the energies of millions on this planet observing a time of inner reflection. Ask: What thought patterns do I need to transform in order to conform to God’s thoughts about me? Remember we are ALL God’s children, thus child gods. Just as your child must learn to walk as we walk, so we–as God’s children–must learn to think as God thinks.
In order to think as God thinks about us, we must recognize: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” Matthew 6:8
Therefore, if your present need is a job or better health … whatever, practice the following:
INSTEAD OF telling yourself: Jobs are scarce … I don’t qualify for the jobs that are available………..
USE THIS LENTEN 40 DAYS FAST TO AFFIRM IN FAITH: “God is leading me to the perfect job and I give thanks.” OR “Perfect health is mine and I give thanks.”
Remember God ALREADY KNOWS YOUR NEED and has already prepared to supply it. “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you HAVE RECEIVED IT, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:24
YOUR JOB IS TO LISTEN and follow through on your intuitive guidance, while maintaining your thoughts on the positive affirmations that enhance your well-being. You must do the foot work … whatever that takes.
LENT is a 40 day fast from feeling that you are separated from God and realizing that YOU AND GOD ARE PARTNERS … GOD KNOWS THE WAY … YOU ARE FOLLOWING HIS GUIDANCE.
7TH DAY OF LENT – “THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS INSIDE OF YOU.” LUKE 17:21
The Divine Self (Elizabeth Claire Prophet)
One of the most difficult concepts to grasp is Jesus’ teaching: “The kingdom of God is inside of you.” For that reason I am posting this Divine Self Illustration … the most comforting and enlightening depiction of this teaching I have seen.
This all important teaching—that the kingdom of God is inside of you—holds the capacity to transform your entire life. We have been taught that God is separate from us, which leaves us feeling alone and helpless, especially when life seems to have turned us upside down with its traumas. The Greek word “entos” means both “inside” and “among.” Therefore, the kingdom of God—or God—is both inside of us and among us. This concept is illustrated by the white light in which you are standing, with another stream of white light flowing down into your heart from above. The purple light surrounding you represents the grace of God transmuting and cleansing you at your request. No negativity within you need be a permanent quality. God’s grace is always available.
For clarity, the three parts of yourself are displayed vertically … in reality, they are interpenetrated. The middle figure represents the mediator between your physical self and your indwelling God presence (the spark of divinity inside of you). This mediator is your Intuitive (or Higher) Mind through which you receive guidance from God … or for Christians, also from Jesus.
The top figure represents the “the kingdom of God inside of you” that is always present as a part of who you are. The circles of color represent “the treasures you have laid up in heaven.” See Matthew 6:19-21, in which Jesus taught: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The treasures you have laid up in heaven are a permanent part of you.
Meditating on this illustration of your Divine Self on a daily basis reminds you that you are truly God’s child and walk through life with your Heavenly Father’s loving white light enfolding you and permeating your being. As the Apostle Paul taught in Acts 17:28 — “For in Him we live and move and have our being.”
God is always inside of us and among (or surrounding) us! Let’s use this Lenten Season to firmly anchor this Truth within our conscious awareness. It can be a source of great comfort during the chaotic days ahead–as the old passes away and a “new Earth is born.”
8TH DAY OF LENT – 12 QUALITIES REQUIRED FOR THE CHRISTED CONSCIOUSNESS
The number 12 is one of the most sacred symbols in the Bible because it represents the achievement of wholeness that results in an expansion of consciousness into the higher realms of spirit. As we saw when Jesus’ disciples elected Matthias to take Judas’ place, it is essential to focus on 12 qualities symbolized by the 12 tribes, the 12 zodiac signs, and the 12 disciples.
In the words of Charles Fillmore, in LET’S KEEP A TRUE LENT, these 12 qualities are: faith, strength, wisdom, love, power, imagination, understanding, will, law of order, zeal, renunciation, and life.
The Lenten Season is a powerful time in which to evaluate ourselves in relationship to each of these 12 qualities. Today, we will focus on the 1ST QUALITY OF FAITH.
Quoting Fillmore: “FAITH is the perceiving power of the mind linked with a power to shape substance. It is spiritual assurance, the power to do the seemingly impossible. It is a force that draws to us our heart’s desire right out of the invisible spiritual substance.”
Faith is the means by which we follow Jesus’ instruction in Mark 11:24 — “So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you HAVE RECEIVED IT, and it will be yours.”
Quoting Fillmore: “Faith working in spiritual substance accomplishes all things. This is the faith that co-operates with creative law. Exercised in spiritual consciousness, it finds its abode, and without variation or disappointment it brings results that are seemingly miraculous. Faith in the reality of things spiritual develops the faith center in man’s brain. When the mental eye is illumined with faith, it sheds a radiance that hovers like a halo around the head and extends in lessening degree throughout the whole body. [In the words of Jesus], ‘When thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light.'” (Matthew 6:22)
On this 8th day of Lent affirm: “I have faith in the glorious infusion of the more abundant life of Christ vitalizing me. I am lifted up and healed.” —Fillmore, LET’S KEEP A TRUE LENT
Meditate on this affirmation until it becomes a part of your thought patterns. Whenever negative thoughts try to take over your mind, replace them by repeating this affirmation. The spoken word is much more powerful than repeating the affirmation silently.
ALWAYS END YOUR AFFIRMATION WITH “THANK YOU, GOD!” Visualize your life opening to the influx of God’s glorious gifts to you!
AMEN … SO IT IS!
To Read On, Click Here
read more
-------
Holy Week Reflection
What is Holy Thursday about? Will we be thrown by the fact that Scripture scholars will say to us that maybe there wasn’t a “last supper?”
Holy Week Reflection by Michael Morwood
I guess most of us throughout life have heard people tell stories that we thought were a bit exaggerated, and the story teller ended with a statement such as, “It’s the gospel truth!” It’s like, you can’t argue with this. This appeal to belief comes out of a long traditional Christian understanding that anything recorded in the gospel is factual – no argument; this is God’s word.
One of the phenomena of my life as a Christian is to discover that scripture scholars are saying to us, “Well… maybe it’s not as simple as that. Maybe what we thought was “gospel truth” is not tied to actual events. Maybe some of the things that are recorded in the gospel really didn’t happen, but are there to lead us to a truth that is beyond the story. Maybe Jesus didn’t say everything that the gospel records him as saying.” And of course many Christians are greatly disturbed by this and ask, “Well, what can be believed then?”
I think this phenomenon is becoming one of the biggest dividing lines among Christians today.
My experience of growing up Roman Catholic was that the big dividing line among Christians was between Protestants and Catholics. We threw rocks at each other from opposite sides of the line, metaphorically of course, but we really threw some good rocks at each other. I presume the Methodists and Presbyterians had their disputes and arguments but at least they stood on the same side of the major dividing line. It seems to me that today there is something significantly new going on in Christianity and the dividing line that is being drawn. On one side you have Roman Catholics, Uniting Church, Anglicans, Church of Christ and so on. And on the other side you have, Roman Catholics, Uniting Church, Anglicans, Church of Christ and so on. Christians are being divided in a new, significant way – and I think Holy Week brings this into sharp focus. What are we about in Holy Week?
Before I talk about Holy Week, I want to touch on one of the major characteristics of this dividing line that is present among us Christians today. Labels can be deceptive, we know… “liberal”, “conservative”, “progressive”, ”traditional”. But it seems to me that the clear differences dividing us are captured by a group on the one hand who consider themselves to be “progressive” in their thinking as against people on the more conservative side. What has become clearer for me in my ministry, over the years in adult faith ministry with Christians, not just in the Roman Catholic community but in ecumenical circles also as a clear line of demarcation is the notion of God.
The first thing I ever learnt about God as a little boy was that God is everywhere and I believe that. But then I was nurtured into a story of a “fall” and I learnt more about a God who lives somewhere else – a God in heaven, a God who was male. And it seems to me that on the traditional side of Christian thinking, on the conservative side if you like, people focus on what I call the “elsewhere” God, the God who lives in “heaven”.
On the progressive side, there are people, and I put myself here, who want more and more to walk in that basic Christian understanding that God is not a human construct, a human projection of a “person”, a deity in the sky, but rather a universal presence in the expansiveness of our universe and beyond.
God is not a localized being somewhere. God is that reality that I learnt about as a young Christian: a universal reality that holds everything in existence, a reality that sustains, energizes and gives life. Nothing can exist outside of God, and as someone on the progressive side of Christianity I want to take this seriously because it seems to me this is the best way I can talk to people about God in the world view of today, as we learn more and more about the universe in which we live.
Revelation, for Christians on the more conservative side, for people who focus on the elsewhere God, is the continuation of a story that most of us have been nurtured into: a male God in heaven who looked down, an overseer who chose one group and not other groups. This group is privileged because they (we) are God’s people and Scripture is understood as God somehow directly speaking to this group – and not to the rest of humanity. This religious viewpoint is fine for the members of the chosen group because it gives them (us) special status and identity. We are God’s people and our scriptures are inspired. We have certainty on our side. But the stories of the Australian aboriginal people are not inspired, nor are the traditional religious stories of the Buddhists or the Hindu’s or the native American people.
As someone on the progressive side I want to take seriously that God is a universal presence, never absent, at work at all times, in all places, in all peoples, all through human history and all through this universe and that Revelation is not something handed down from the clouds to a select group of people, Revelation is the spirit of God working in all peoples of all times, in their world view, in their thought patterns and in particular personalities. How can it be any different? So, yes, we stand privileged to walk as the presence of God surfaces in the religious traditions in which we stand, the Hebrew, the Christian traditions, but its time for us Christians to be more serious about respecting this same presence at work in other traditions, in other people, within cultural and historical limitations, just as that presence has worked within our traditions with their particular limitations.
Whether we focus on an “everywhere” Presence or an “elsewhere” God will radically affect our concept of “salvation” – and this is particularly relevant for Holy Week, especially when we consider Good Friday. What is the story of salvation that we want to tell in today’s world? The traditional Christian story, the conservative Christian story, will be a story that is tied to a literal understanding of scripture, a “fall” and an elsewhere God who, because of this “fall” refuses to allow presence to his dwelling place in another place somewhere, where this elsewhere God resides. Jesus is interpreted, then, as the incarnation of someone who comes from that elsewhere place – and all our traditional language is about coming down, living on earth, and then going back up. John’s gospel is full of this imagery. So Jesus “saves” us because he gets us into heaven, that place of residence of the elsewhere God, and Good Friday has come to ritualize the story of a God who won’t let us into heaven until and unless Jesus suffers and dies.
Those of us on the progressive side are asking what sort of God this is. Will we continue to tell the story of Jesus and the story of salvation as someone who gets us into heaven or will we tell the story of Jesus according to what got Jesus out of bed every morning and motivated him to speak to the “crowd”, the battlers, the down and outs and anyone ready to listen? When preaching about the reign, the kingdom, the presence of God, to these people, Jesus did not tell the story of a God distant from them, a God who locked them out. Quite the contrary. He urged his listeners to reflect on their everyday experience of life: You are neighbour, aren’t you? You care, you clothe, you feed, you visit. You do this, don’t you? Grudgingly, perhaps, they said, “Yes”, and Jesus exhorted them to name what was going on in their own lives: Here is the presence of God in your lives. Name it – when you are neighbour, when you do the good and decent human reality. When you live in love, you live in God, God lives in you.
Salvation, as I see it, is about Jesus opening eyes and minds to the reality of the God in whom we live and move and have our being. That is salvation. Salvation is about Jesus freeing us from images and thought patterns that lock us in to notions that God is elsewhere or that God is a deity to be feared, a deity who keeps notes, a deity who will punish. Jesus says in effect, “That is not my understanding of God. That is not my God.” Have we been set free?
Does Jesus come from God? Of course Jesus comes from God, but where is God and what is the Christian religion about? Is it about continuing to play an elitist role in the world, that we have salvation and only through us will people have access to God? Will Christianity continue to do that? Or will Christianity start to do what Jesus did and go to people and proclaim the good news to all people that the presence of God is in their everyday living. When anyone lives in love, they live in God and God lives in them. Why does the Christian religion persistently and stubbornly refuse to preach this basic, foundational, inclusive insight that so clearly motivated Jesus’ own preaching?
We have heard the words about living in love and living in God all our lives and yet so often it’s like water off a duck’s back. This insight has nothing to do with belonging to a particular religion. This is about humanity; this is about humanity doing what humanity ought to do, to be neighbour, to care, to allow the spirit of God to be given expression in our lives. This is the message of salvation the world needs to hear today. Only a religious institution self-centered, focused on its own elitist, exclusive claims of access to God and fixated on its claims to interpret the mind and the thinking of an elsewhere God, could continue to ignore the core of Jesus’ religious insight and teaching.
So when we come to Holy Week the dividing line is clearly facing us.
What is Holy Thursday about? Will we be thrown by the fact that Scripture scholars will say to us that maybe there wasn’t a “last supper” – because that is what they are saying to us. Will we be thrown and disturbed by the fact that scripture scholars will say to us: “Jesus did not, the night before he died, sit somewhere and recite chapters 13, 14, 15,16 and 17 of John’s gospel. In fact, much of John’s Gospel is theology, shaped well after Jesus died.” Many Christian churches throughout the world next Thursday will celebrate the idea that Jesus instituted a priesthood. Jesus didn’t do anything like that. Jesus did not institute priesthood as Christianity knows it. Many Christian churches will celebrate the fact that Jesus instituted the Eucharist on the night before he died. No, he didn’t. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus of Nazareth never renounced his Jewish religion. Never. The first Christians were Jews. I’m not saying anything about priesthood and Eucharist. We need those roles, we need those rituals, but I am wanting to point out that we can play a game, and Christianity continues to play it, that is intellectually dishonest by going back to Holy Thursday and putting a theological understanding on it which has nothing to do with what Jesus, the Jew, did on the night before he died.
So where does that leave us on Holy Thursday and Good Friday? Where it leaves me is that I want to enter into the human experience. I want to respond to the invitation that Jesus offers me in Matthews Gospel: Come and learn of my heart. I want to be with a man who had a dream, a dream of how this world could change, a dream of people who would connect their everyday human experience with the presence of God in their lives, a dream of people who would connect with all people through this insight, a dream of people freed from religious dependence, a dream of people being able to say, “Yes I may have my problems, I may have my failures, I may have my struggle but one thing I am utterly certain about is that God is here with me in the mess, and in the struggle and in the ups and downs. No one can take that from me.” The tragedy is that this dream is so different from Christian preaching proclaiming that God is elsewhere and you need middle management to get access to God. On Holy Thursday and Good Friday I want to be with a man who had his dreams. I can and will enter into the story of a last supper. I can enter into the story of a man who sat with his friends the night before he died, the story of this Jewish man breaking bread with them and telling the story of God in their lives and in their history and this man taking bread and saying, in effect, “Next time you gather and you tell this story of God with you, put me in the story and in the breaking of the bread for this is what it is like to be me , blessed, broken and given. I give everything I am for what I believe. When I’ve gone, will you continue, will you keep my dream alive?”
What a monumental failure of Christianity if the Christian religion does not keep the dream of Jesus alive but instead keeps alive a theology that makes it elite. Jesus did not get out of bed for that theology, Jesus got out of bed everyday to help convince people, whoever they were, of God’s presence with them. Good Friday has nothing, nothing to do with an elsewhere God, locking us out and determining, according to traditional Christian theology, “I will not let you in until Jesus dies.” That is a tribal, outdated, outmoded, notion of a deity, that has no place in the 21st Century. If we replace that notion of God, and I think it is becoming increasingly clearer that we ought to, we can replace it with a basic, thoroughgoing, Christian understanding of God – that mysterious presence everywhere holding everything in existence, a God beyond our images and beyond our words, a reality that the stories we tell can only point to, never describe.
Good Friday for me is the story of a man who had a dream and his dream was dashed. It is the story of human cruelty. It is a story of human failure. It is the story of a man in loneliness, in darkness, in doubt, in terrible pain. It is the human story, raising basic and searching questions about God. What do you believe about God when life pulls you apart? Is God a manipulator of the human condition? Good Friday ought not be a story about God testing someone, God asking something. What an image of God! Good Friday holds up to us the human condition, the story of Jesus, the story of our own human experience. Pain, failure, rejection, the seeming absence of God, darkness, struggle. This is what life does to us at times. What do we really believe or hold on to, when life does this to us? And one thing that I have learnt about life and I’m sure its common to all of us when we have watched people suffer, when we have watched loved ones die, we come face to face with the incredible depth of the human spirit and that’s what I see in Jesus of Nazareth and the question for me to contemplate on Good Friday is: Why, Jesus, do you believe? How can you believe in a good and loving God when life does this to you? And I need to contemplate this Jesus because this Jesus invites me to walk in his faith. That’s what I want to celebrate and what I want to ritualize on Good Friday whether I embrace the cross, or through some other ritual or eating the bread or whatever it may be in our various denominations. I want to stand up and ritualize: Yes, Jesus, in the mess of life I will hang on to the faith that you held on to and from which nothing could shake you.
Easter is not about a journey somewhere to another God. Easter is about a transformation within the universal presence of God. People ask me, “What happens when we die?” And I say I do not know, but I know I believe that I live in God, that I will die in God and that death will not start a journey to somewhere else where God “lives”. In death I will be transformed into a way of living on in God for which I have no images and no adequate language. I’ll celebrate that at Easter and I can read the Christian stories, I can read stories about an ascension of a body into heaven but I don’t want to literalise it. If I literalise the story then I destroy the mystery, to which the story points. I mean, who can believe a physical body goes up through the galaxy somewhere? But I can and should appreciate that the story of “ascension” was the method the first Christians in their world view used to present their understanding that death was not the end of Jesus. Death was not the end and love does conquer.
I mentioned earlier, a dividing line and rocks being thrown across the line. They were tough times. Sadly, the phenomenon is still with us; only the dividing line is different. Those of us on what you might call the progressive side of Christian thinking have to dodge some fair size rocks these days. There is a price to be paid for stepping out of or over the line. And I think it is important for those of us who choose to be on the progressive side of the line to be able to articulate clearly for ourselves on what ground we stand. Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter bring two aspects of that ground into sharp focus for me.
One: this week I will contemplate the human reality of Jesus of Nazareth, because that mirrors my experience and it mirrors the experience of a suffering world.
Two: I will walk, pray and reflect in the ground not of an “elsewhere” God but in the believe that God is here amongst us and that Jesus died yearning for us to know this and to know all of us in our own ways are striving to give expression to the mysterious, awesome, reality we call “God”.
-------
Holy Week Reflection
What is Holy Thursday about? Will we be thrown by the fact that Scripture scholars will say to us that maybe there wasn’t a “last supper?”
Holy Week Reflection by Michael Morwood
I guess most of us throughout life have heard people tell stories that we thought were a bit exaggerated, and the story teller ended with a statement such as, “It’s the gospel truth!” It’s like, you can’t argue with this. This appeal to belief comes out of a long traditional Christian understanding that anything recorded in the gospel is factual – no argument; this is God’s word.
One of the phenomena of my life as a Christian is to discover that scripture scholars are saying to us, “Well… maybe it’s not as simple as that. Maybe what we thought was “gospel truth” is not tied to actual events. Maybe some of the things that are recorded in the gospel really didn’t happen, but are there to lead us to a truth that is beyond the story. Maybe Jesus didn’t say everything that the gospel records him as saying.” And of course many Christians are greatly disturbed by this and ask, “Well, what can be believed then?”
I think this phenomenon is becoming one of the biggest dividing lines among Christians today.
My experience of growing up Roman Catholic was that the big dividing line among Christians was between Protestants and Catholics. We threw rocks at each other from opposite sides of the line, metaphorically of course, but we really threw some good rocks at each other. I presume the Methodists and Presbyterians had their disputes and arguments but at least they stood on the same side of the major dividing line. It seems to me that today there is something significantly new going on in Christianity and the dividing line that is being drawn. On one side you have Roman Catholics, Uniting Church, Anglicans, Church of Christ and so on. And on the other side you have, Roman Catholics, Uniting Church, Anglicans, Church of Christ and so on. Christians are being divided in a new, significant way – and I think Holy Week brings this into sharp focus. What are we about in Holy Week?
Before I talk about Holy Week, I want to touch on one of the major characteristics of this dividing line that is present among us Christians today. Labels can be deceptive, we know… “liberal”, “conservative”, “progressive”, ”traditional”. But it seems to me that the clear differences dividing us are captured by a group on the one hand who consider themselves to be “progressive” in their thinking as against people on the more conservative side. What has become clearer for me in my ministry, over the years in adult faith ministry with Christians, not just in the Roman Catholic community but in ecumenical circles also as a clear line of demarcation is the notion of God.
The first thing I ever learnt about God as a little boy was that God is everywhere and I believe that. But then I was nurtured into a story of a “fall” and I learnt more about a God who lives somewhere else – a God in heaven, a God who was male. And it seems to me that on the traditional side of Christian thinking, on the conservative side if you like, people focus on what I call the “elsewhere” God, the God who lives in “heaven”.
On the progressive side, there are people, and I put myself here, who want more and more to walk in that basic Christian understanding that God is not a human construct, a human projection of a “person”, a deity in the sky, but rather a universal presence in the expansiveness of our universe and beyond.
God is not a localized being somewhere. God is that reality that I learnt about as a young Christian: a universal reality that holds everything in existence, a reality that sustains, energizes and gives life. Nothing can exist outside of God, and as someone on the progressive side of Christianity I want to take this seriously because it seems to me this is the best way I can talk to people about God in the world view of today, as we learn more and more about the universe in which we live.
Revelation, for Christians on the more conservative side, for people who focus on the elsewhere God, is the continuation of a story that most of us have been nurtured into: a male God in heaven who looked down, an overseer who chose one group and not other groups. This group is privileged because they (we) are God’s people and Scripture is understood as God somehow directly speaking to this group – and not to the rest of humanity. This religious viewpoint is fine for the members of the chosen group because it gives them (us) special status and identity. We are God’s people and our scriptures are inspired. We have certainty on our side. But the stories of the Australian aboriginal people are not inspired, nor are the traditional religious stories of the Buddhists or the Hindu’s or the native American people.
As someone on the progressive side I want to take seriously that God is a universal presence, never absent, at work at all times, in all places, in all peoples, all through human history and all through this universe and that Revelation is not something handed down from the clouds to a select group of people, Revelation is the spirit of God working in all peoples of all times, in their world view, in their thought patterns and in particular personalities. How can it be any different? So, yes, we stand privileged to walk as the presence of God surfaces in the religious traditions in which we stand, the Hebrew, the Christian traditions, but its time for us Christians to be more serious about respecting this same presence at work in other traditions, in other people, within cultural and historical limitations, just as that presence has worked within our traditions with their particular limitations.
Whether we focus on an “everywhere” Presence or an “elsewhere” God will radically affect our concept of “salvation” – and this is particularly relevant for Holy Week, especially when we consider Good Friday. What is the story of salvation that we want to tell in today’s world? The traditional Christian story, the conservative Christian story, will be a story that is tied to a literal understanding of scripture, a “fall” and an elsewhere God who, because of this “fall” refuses to allow presence to his dwelling place in another place somewhere, where this elsewhere God resides. Jesus is interpreted, then, as the incarnation of someone who comes from that elsewhere place – and all our traditional language is about coming down, living on earth, and then going back up. John’s gospel is full of this imagery. So Jesus “saves” us because he gets us into heaven, that place of residence of the elsewhere God, and Good Friday has come to ritualize the story of a God who won’t let us into heaven until and unless Jesus suffers and dies.
Those of us on the progressive side are asking what sort of God this is. Will we continue to tell the story of Jesus and the story of salvation as someone who gets us into heaven or will we tell the story of Jesus according to what got Jesus out of bed every morning and motivated him to speak to the “crowd”, the battlers, the down and outs and anyone ready to listen? When preaching about the reign, the kingdom, the presence of God, to these people, Jesus did not tell the story of a God distant from them, a God who locked them out. Quite the contrary. He urged his listeners to reflect on their everyday experience of life: You are neighbour, aren’t you? You care, you clothe, you feed, you visit. You do this, don’t you? Grudgingly, perhaps, they said, “Yes”, and Jesus exhorted them to name what was going on in their own lives: Here is the presence of God in your lives. Name it – when you are neighbour, when you do the good and decent human reality. When you live in love, you live in God, God lives in you.
Salvation, as I see it, is about Jesus opening eyes and minds to the reality of the God in whom we live and move and have our being. That is salvation. Salvation is about Jesus freeing us from images and thought patterns that lock us in to notions that God is elsewhere or that God is a deity to be feared, a deity who keeps notes, a deity who will punish. Jesus says in effect, “That is not my understanding of God. That is not my God.” Have we been set free?
Does Jesus come from God? Of course Jesus comes from God, but where is God and what is the Christian religion about? Is it about continuing to play an elitist role in the world, that we have salvation and only through us will people have access to God? Will Christianity continue to do that? Or will Christianity start to do what Jesus did and go to people and proclaim the good news to all people that the presence of God is in their everyday living. When anyone lives in love, they live in God and God lives in them. Why does the Christian religion persistently and stubbornly refuse to preach this basic, foundational, inclusive insight that so clearly motivated Jesus’ own preaching?
We have heard the words about living in love and living in God all our lives and yet so often it’s like water off a duck’s back. This insight has nothing to do with belonging to a particular religion. This is about humanity; this is about humanity doing what humanity ought to do, to be neighbour, to care, to allow the spirit of God to be given expression in our lives. This is the message of salvation the world needs to hear today. Only a religious institution self-centered, focused on its own elitist, exclusive claims of access to God and fixated on its claims to interpret the mind and the thinking of an elsewhere God, could continue to ignore the core of Jesus’ religious insight and teaching.
So when we come to Holy Week the dividing line is clearly facing us.
What is Holy Thursday about? Will we be thrown by the fact that Scripture scholars will say to us that maybe there wasn’t a “last supper” – because that is what they are saying to us. Will we be thrown and disturbed by the fact that scripture scholars will say to us: “Jesus did not, the night before he died, sit somewhere and recite chapters 13, 14, 15,16 and 17 of John’s gospel. In fact, much of John’s Gospel is theology, shaped well after Jesus died.” Many Christian churches throughout the world next Thursday will celebrate the idea that Jesus instituted a priesthood. Jesus didn’t do anything like that. Jesus did not institute priesthood as Christianity knows it. Many Christian churches will celebrate the fact that Jesus instituted the Eucharist on the night before he died. No, he didn’t. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus of Nazareth never renounced his Jewish religion. Never. The first Christians were Jews. I’m not saying anything about priesthood and Eucharist. We need those roles, we need those rituals, but I am wanting to point out that we can play a game, and Christianity continues to play it, that is intellectually dishonest by going back to Holy Thursday and putting a theological understanding on it which has nothing to do with what Jesus, the Jew, did on the night before he died.
So where does that leave us on Holy Thursday and Good Friday? Where it leaves me is that I want to enter into the human experience. I want to respond to the invitation that Jesus offers me in Matthews Gospel: Come and learn of my heart. I want to be with a man who had a dream, a dream of how this world could change, a dream of people who would connect their everyday human experience with the presence of God in their lives, a dream of people who would connect with all people through this insight, a dream of people freed from religious dependence, a dream of people being able to say, “Yes I may have my problems, I may have my failures, I may have my struggle but one thing I am utterly certain about is that God is here with me in the mess, and in the struggle and in the ups and downs. No one can take that from me.” The tragedy is that this dream is so different from Christian preaching proclaiming that God is elsewhere and you need middle management to get access to God. On Holy Thursday and Good Friday I want to be with a man who had his dreams. I can and will enter into the story of a last supper. I can enter into the story of a man who sat with his friends the night before he died, the story of this Jewish man breaking bread with them and telling the story of God in their lives and in their history and this man taking bread and saying, in effect, “Next time you gather and you tell this story of God with you, put me in the story and in the breaking of the bread for this is what it is like to be me , blessed, broken and given. I give everything I am for what I believe. When I’ve gone, will you continue, will you keep my dream alive?”
What a monumental failure of Christianity if the Christian religion does not keep the dream of Jesus alive but instead keeps alive a theology that makes it elite. Jesus did not get out of bed for that theology, Jesus got out of bed everyday to help convince people, whoever they were, of God’s presence with them. Good Friday has nothing, nothing to do with an elsewhere God, locking us out and determining, according to traditional Christian theology, “I will not let you in until Jesus dies.” That is a tribal, outdated, outmoded, notion of a deity, that has no place in the 21st Century. If we replace that notion of God, and I think it is becoming increasingly clearer that we ought to, we can replace it with a basic, thoroughgoing, Christian understanding of God – that mysterious presence everywhere holding everything in existence, a God beyond our images and beyond our words, a reality that the stories we tell can only point to, never describe.
Good Friday for me is the story of a man who had a dream and his dream was dashed. It is the story of human cruelty. It is a story of human failure. It is the story of a man in loneliness, in darkness, in doubt, in terrible pain. It is the human story, raising basic and searching questions about God. What do you believe about God when life pulls you apart? Is God a manipulator of the human condition? Good Friday ought not be a story about God testing someone, God asking something. What an image of God! Good Friday holds up to us the human condition, the story of Jesus, the story of our own human experience. Pain, failure, rejection, the seeming absence of God, darkness, struggle. This is what life does to us at times. What do we really believe or hold on to, when life does this to us? And one thing that I have learnt about life and I’m sure its common to all of us when we have watched people suffer, when we have watched loved ones die, we come face to face with the incredible depth of the human spirit and that’s what I see in Jesus of Nazareth and the question for me to contemplate on Good Friday is: Why, Jesus, do you believe? How can you believe in a good and loving God when life does this to you? And I need to contemplate this Jesus because this Jesus invites me to walk in his faith. That’s what I want to celebrate and what I want to ritualize on Good Friday whether I embrace the cross, or through some other ritual or eating the bread or whatever it may be in our various denominations. I want to stand up and ritualize: Yes, Jesus, in the mess of life I will hang on to the faith that you held on to and from which nothing could shake you.
Easter is not about a journey somewhere to another God. Easter is about a transformation within the universal presence of God. People ask me, “What happens when we die?” And I say I do not know, but I know I believe that I live in God, that I will die in God and that death will not start a journey to somewhere else where God “lives”. In death I will be transformed into a way of living on in God for which I have no images and no adequate language. I’ll celebrate that at Easter and I can read the Christian stories, I can read stories about an ascension of a body into heaven but I don’t want to literalise it. If I literalise the story then I destroy the mystery, to which the story points. I mean, who can believe a physical body goes up through the galaxy somewhere? But I can and should appreciate that the story of “ascension” was the method the first Christians in their world view used to present their understanding that death was not the end of Jesus. Death was not the end and love does conquer.
I mentioned earlier, a dividing line and rocks being thrown across the line. They were tough times. Sadly, the phenomenon is still with us; only the dividing line is different. Those of us on what you might call the progressive side of Christian thinking have to dodge some fair size rocks these days. There is a price to be paid for stepping out of or over the line. And I think it is important for those of us who choose to be on the progressive side of the line to be able to articulate clearly for ourselves on what ground we stand. Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter bring two aspects of that ground into sharp focus for me.
One: this week I will contemplate the human reality of Jesus of Nazareth, because that mirrors my experience and it mirrors the experience of a suffering world.
Two: I will walk, pray and reflect in the ground not of an “elsewhere” God but in the believe that God is here amongst us and that Jesus died yearning for us to know this and to know all of us in our own ways are striving to give expression to the mysterious, awesome, reality we call “God”.
-------
READ ON ...
-------
Click here to go to website/sign up for email list
Events and Updates
April 8th 9:30 EST join Rev. Don Ajene Wilcoxson's online class Emotional Intelligence: The Soul’s Expression of Self. Through contemplation, reflection and discussion, students in this class will gain a new perspective on emotions, a perspective that will foster personal and spiritual growth.
Emotional Intelligence: The Soul’s Expression of Self
You may feel them as goose pimples, a warmth in your chest, or a deep ache in your belly. What are emotions and what triggers them? Emotions are an oft misunderstood, or even ignored, aspect of spiritual life. Sometimes we are led to believe that emotions – whether negative or positive – are simply obstacles to remove in order to achieve enlightenment. However, it is when we examine our feelings and investigate to where and what they point, that we discover our emotions to be an expression of Spirit moving through us. By raising our awareness and deepening our understanding of our emotions, we will be able to better manage and engage these puzzling aspects of ourself.
Through contemplation, reflection and discussion, students in this class will gain a new perspective on emotions, a perspective that will foster personal and spiritual growth. As you increase awareness of yourself, you will come to a deeper and more expansive sense of presence than ever before.
Images
READ ON ...
-------
Click here to go to website/sign up for email list
Events and Updates
April 8th 9:30 EST join Rev. Don Ajene Wilcoxson's online class Emotional Intelligence: The Soul’s Expression of Self. Through contemplation, reflection and discussion, students in this class will gain a new perspective on emotions, a perspective that will foster personal and spiritual growth.
Emotional Intelligence: The Soul’s Expression of Self
Through contemplation, reflection and discussion, students in this class will gain a new perspective on emotions, a perspective that will foster personal and spiritual growth. As you increase awareness of yourself, you will come to a deeper and more expansive sense of presence than ever before.
Images
Start:
April 8, 2017 12:30 PM
End:
April 8, 2017 8:00 PM
Location:
Online Webinar
Register:
$80-95
Organization:
One Spirit Learning Alliance
Website:
http://www.onespiritinterfaith.org/2016/06/emotional-intelligence-souls-expression-self/
Email:
info@onespiritinterfaith.org
READ ON...
-------
Join us as we celebrate Marcus’ new book Days of Awe and Wonder
On March 10th and 11th The Marcus J. Borg Foundation will celebrate a new collection of writings by Marcus Borg, Days of Awe and Wonder in Portland OR.
On the evening of March 11, Marc’s birthday anniversary, we will have a fundraising dinner at the Heathman Hotel ...
Join us as we celebrate Marcus’ new book “Days of Awe and Wonder”
Lecture Event
-------
Join us as we celebrate Marcus’ new book Days of Awe and Wonder
On March 10th and 11th The Marcus J. Borg Foundation will celebrate a new collection of writings by Marcus Borg, Days of Awe and Wonder in Portland OR.
On the evening of March 11, Marc’s birthday anniversary, we will have a fundraising dinner at the Heathman Hotel ...
Join us as we celebrate Marcus’ new book “Days of Awe and Wonder”
Lecture Event
On Friday evening, March 10 and Saturday morning March 11, 2017, The Marcus J. Borg Foundation will celebrate a new collection of writings by Marcus Borg, Days of Awe and Wonder. The book features selections from his dissertation written at age 27 to his final book at age 70. Included are unpublished sermons and blogs. The event will be at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Portland, Oregon where Marcus served as Canon Theologian. Our guest lecturer is The Reverend Dr. Robin Meyers.
Robin and Marcus shared affection, affinities, and scholarship. Long before Marcus’ death he recognized and valued Robin as an important voice and radical truth-teller exploring what it means to be Christian in the 21st century.
It is clear in this volume that what shaped Marc most deeply was an awareness and experience of “The More,” the Sacred, what some of us call God. “The More” evokes amazement, gratitude, wonder.
Marcus would insist that we not lose sight of “how filled with awe is this place…” even amidst the uncertainties and complexities of our time. Quoting from a favorite healing story of Marcus’, the story of blind Bartimaeus, we too cry out, “Help us see again.” And in seeing again, with eyes wide open, be born into life in God. Robin will help us do just that.
Robin is known nationally and internationally as a sought after preacher, advocate for the return of peace and justice as the focus of faith, and calls the church to be the Beloved Community. He is a best-selling author of seven books. A few of his book titles will tell you he does not mince words: Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus; The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus; Spiritual Defiance: Building a Beloved Community of Resistance.
Robin is the senior minister of Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ, in Oklahoma City (30 years), the Distinguished Professor of Social Justice in the Philosophy Department at Oklahoma City University (25 years), a fellow and member of the Board of Directors of the Westar Institute (home of the Jesus Seminar).
Let us come together and continue the unending conversation Marcus so deeply engaged: What is the heart of our concerns, what is real, what is possible, how shall we live?
When:
Friday, March 10, 2017
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Saturday, March 11, 2017
9:00 –12:00 noon
Where:
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, co-sponsor
147 NW 19th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97209
Registration: $75 Early Bird – March 1st: $100.00
Students: $35.00 (coupon)
Marcus’ book, Days of Awe and Wonder, not available to the general public until March 14, can be purchased at a 10% discount through the Trinity Cathedral Bookstore. Robin Meyers’ books will also be available.
(If you prefer to register with a personal check please click here to download a registration form.)
Celebratory Dinner
Robin and Marcus shared affection, affinities, and scholarship. Long before Marcus’ death he recognized and valued Robin as an important voice and radical truth-teller exploring what it means to be Christian in the 21st century.
It is clear in this volume that what shaped Marc most deeply was an awareness and experience of “The More,” the Sacred, what some of us call God. “The More” evokes amazement, gratitude, wonder.
Marcus would insist that we not lose sight of “how filled with awe is this place…” even amidst the uncertainties and complexities of our time. Quoting from a favorite healing story of Marcus’, the story of blind Bartimaeus, we too cry out, “Help us see again.” And in seeing again, with eyes wide open, be born into life in God. Robin will help us do just that.
Robin is known nationally and internationally as a sought after preacher, advocate for the return of peace and justice as the focus of faith, and calls the church to be the Beloved Community. He is a best-selling author of seven books. A few of his book titles will tell you he does not mince words: Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus; The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive Way of Jesus; Spiritual Defiance: Building a Beloved Community of Resistance.
Robin is the senior minister of Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ, in Oklahoma City (30 years), the Distinguished Professor of Social Justice in the Philosophy Department at Oklahoma City University (25 years), a fellow and member of the Board of Directors of the Westar Institute (home of the Jesus Seminar).
Let us come together and continue the unending conversation Marcus so deeply engaged: What is the heart of our concerns, what is real, what is possible, how shall we live?
When:
Friday, March 10, 2017
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Saturday, March 11, 2017
9:00 –12:00 noon
Where:
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, co-sponsor
147 NW 19th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97209
Registration: $75 Early Bird – March 1st: $100.00
Students: $35.00 (coupon)
Marcus’ book, Days of Awe and Wonder, not available to the general public until March 14, can be purchased at a 10% discount through the Trinity Cathedral Bookstore. Robin Meyers’ books will also be available.
(If you prefer to register with a personal check please click here to download a registration form.)
Celebratory Dinner
On the evening of March 11, Marc’s birthday anniversary, we will have a fundraising dinner at the Heathman Hotel celebrating our days of awe and wonder. Poet and prose writer Kim Stafford and Marianne Borg will provide an evening of reflection and recollection. Our goal is to develop an ear for sound theology and an eye for the sacredness of our common ground, both foundational for our work ahead.
Exploring Our Days of Awe and Wonder with Special Guest: Kim Stafford
When: Saturday March 11, 2017 (Marcus’ Birthday Anniversary)
Where: Heathman Hotel Mezzanine Level, Fremont, Morrison and Hawthorne Rooms
Time: 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Cost: $150 per person, $75 per ticket tax deductible contribution to the Foundation
Marcus always wore red socks. Please feel free to wear something red to this celebratory occasion. Limited seating is available for this event.
Join us for an evening of discovery and reflection. Marianne Borg and Kim Stafford will frame the evening. Kim Stafford, author of dozens of books of poetry and prose, professor at Lewis and Clark College and director of the Northwest Writing Institute is with us to help us see again. And recognize anew that ours are days of awe and wonder.
Our gift to you for attending this dinner:
* A copy of Marcus’ new book Days of Awe and Wonder: How to be a Christian in the 21st Century
* A copy of Kim Stafford’s book, The Muses Among Us: Eloquent listening and other treasures of the writer’s craft
* A journal (similar to one Marcus used throughout his life) to encourage observing and listening
* And a pen to start right away
We hope you will join us!
(If you prefer to register with a personal check please click here to download a registration form.)
For the love of our common life and commitment to making the world a better place, join us to celebrate the work of Marcus J. Borg.
Images
Exploring Our Days of Awe and Wonder with Special Guest: Kim Stafford
When: Saturday March 11, 2017 (Marcus’ Birthday Anniversary)
Where: Heathman Hotel Mezzanine Level, Fremont, Morrison and Hawthorne Rooms
Time: 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Cost: $150 per person, $75 per ticket tax deductible contribution to the Foundation
Marcus always wore red socks. Please feel free to wear something red to this celebratory occasion. Limited seating is available for this event.
Join us for an evening of discovery and reflection. Marianne Borg and Kim Stafford will frame the evening. Kim Stafford, author of dozens of books of poetry and prose, professor at Lewis and Clark College and director of the Northwest Writing Institute is with us to help us see again. And recognize anew that ours are days of awe and wonder.
Our gift to you for attending this dinner:
* A copy of Marcus’ new book Days of Awe and Wonder: How to be a Christian in the 21st Century
* A copy of Kim Stafford’s book, The Muses Among Us: Eloquent listening and other treasures of the writer’s craft
* A journal (similar to one Marcus used throughout his life) to encourage observing and listening
* And a pen to start right away
We hope you will join us!
(If you prefer to register with a personal check please click here to download a registration form.)
For the love of our common life and commitment to making the world a better place, join us to celebrate the work of Marcus J. Borg.
Images
Start:
March 10, 2017
End:
March 11, 2017
Location:
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and
Heathman Hotel Mezzanine Level, Fremont, Morrison and Hawthorne Rooms
Portland OR United States
Google Map
Register:
$75
Organization:
Marcu Borg Foundation
Website:
marcusjborgfoundation.org
-------
View all upcoming events here!
News
Job Listings
*** Remember to send us your Events and Job Postings - we will advertise them on our website free!
Join us as we co-create A New Reformation and an international society dedicated to the work and theology of Bishop Spong.
For those seeking to experience Christianity in a new and vibrant way, Bishop John Shelby Spong offers fresh spiritual ideas. Over the past four decades, he has become one of the definitive voices for progressive Christianity.
As a member of this online community, you’ll receive insightful weekly essays, access to all of the essay archives, access to message boards which will connect you with other believers in exile, and answers to your questions in our free weekly Q and A.
Transformation Now! A Bishop Spong Society
Welcome to the JohnShelbySpong.com, Transformation Now website!
Join us as we transition toward and co-create Transformation Now, an international society dedicated to perpetuating and expanding on the work and theology of Bishop Spong.
For those seeking to experience Christianity in a new and vibrant way, Bishop John Shelby Spong and his endorsed successors offer fresh spiritual ideas. Over the past four decades, Bishop Spong has become one of the definitive voices for progressive Christianity. As a member of Bishop Spong’s online community, you’ll receive insightful weekly essays, access to all of the essay archives, access to message boards which will connect you with other believers in exile, and answers to your questions in our weekly Q and A.
IMPORTANT UPDATE!!
We will continue to maintain this site indefinitely and although there will be some transitions as we move toward a rotating team of Bishop Spong successors, our vision is that this site will be the foundation of an international society formed to perpetuate and advance his thoughts. All subscribers will continue will have exclusive access to Bishop Spong’s Essay Archives. These hundreds of essays, written by John Spong exclusively for this site over a 16 year period, are excellent for use in research, in churches, study groups, and education.
Click here for a list of our new authors and their bios!
LETTER FROM BISHOP SPONG:
Dear Friends,
As you may have heard, while visiting in Marquette, Michigan I suffered a stroke. The date was September 10th. Since that time I have worked hard to regain my strength. I have been quite successful in that and now have no trouble walking or using my arms. It has been a learning experience. Health is a major demand of my life. I still use my running track each day for about three miles, so I feel most fortunate. The book I was writing on “Charting a New Reformation” will meet its deadline and be at Harper by the due date, the first of March, 2017. I entertained returning to my column, but as the time goes by I no longer have the strength to keep up that schedule, so I have informed Fred Plumer of Progressive Christianity.Org that I will not be able to return to that task. I write to notify you, my readers, and to enable Fred to begin the process to choose a successor.
That is not an easy thing to do for I have loved that column and the relationship I have had with so many of you. I realize that I can no lo longer write, edit and send a column a week out to my readers. I have written this column for sixteen years and it demands an intensity that I no longer profess. Even aided by my wife, who edited every column I ever wrote, cannot make up the difference. So we have decided to give it up.
I want to thank you all for the many letters I have received. More than thirty thousand letters have come to me since the stroke. There was no way I could acknowledge them or even respond to them, but I read every one of them and was warmed by the experience. I am now in my 86th year of life. It has been a good life and I am proud of it all. I wish I could have finished on my schedule, but that was not to be.
I ask you to give your attention to the following letter written with my blessing by my colleagues at Progressive Christianity about the future. I hope it will be the start of a major new contribution to religious journalism,
Sincerely
JOHN SHELBY SPONG
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR SUBSCRIBERS?
Dear Friends,
Over the last few months we have had time to think about what we could do if Jack Spong could not return to writing his regular column for us. We have worked with our team to consider what we might do if this became the eventuality, and I am very excited about what we’ve been able to put together. As a subscriber to the newsletter you have been on the inside circle as we have charted this new reformation. It has been fun, challenging, and sometimes even a little scary going into these uncharted waters. I hope you have gained great value out of it.
The next big step in the new reformation is to put what we have been talking about into widespread practice, and that’s where the next phase of this subscription newsletter comes into play. We have been able to assemble a team of some of the best and brightest authors / theologians / and movement leaders out there today who are taking these bold concepts and enlightenments and putting them into practice in the streets, pews, and on social media.
We have a few well known national lecturers and authors such as Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, Rev. Gretta Vosper, Rev. David Felten, and a close personal friend to Bishop Spong, Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, who was the first person elected bishop in the Episcopal to have his election turned down by the house of Bishops since 1875 on strictly theological grounds. In addition to those veteran voices, we have some of the most compelling leaders of the social media movement out there today, such as “Science” Mike McHargue, Rev. Mark Sandlin, Eric Alexander, and Rev. Roger Wolsey. If you haven’t heard of any of these folks I assure you they are out there in a big way helping to lead the next generations along the new reformation. These authors will be on a regular rotating schedule to write a series of columns that will not be published anywhere else, for our new Bishop Spong inspired and endorsed series, called A New Reformation. We envision this series forming a virtual society around the world that serves to perpetuate and expand upon his thoughts.
Over the coming weeks you will hear more from my team about this exciting new transition, and our cast of contributors. We will continue to repost some of the Spong essays of the past and maybe even an occasional new one if that becomes possible. From here I welcome you to grow with us through our next phase as I believe it will be greatly valuable and entertaining to you; but also because I know your support will be essential in growing our message exponentially around the world from here on out. By continuing to be a subscriber, you will be supporting the infinitely important work that Bishop Spong has shared with our world.
Sincerely,
Fred Plumer, ProgressiveChristianity.org
View all upcoming events here!
News
Job Listings
*** Remember to send us your Events and Job Postings - we will advertise them on our website free!
Join us as we co-create A New Reformation and an international society dedicated to the work and theology of Bishop Spong.
For those seeking to experience Christianity in a new and vibrant way, Bishop John Shelby Spong offers fresh spiritual ideas. Over the past four decades, he has become one of the definitive voices for progressive Christianity.
As a member of this online community, you’ll receive insightful weekly essays, access to all of the essay archives, access to message boards which will connect you with other believers in exile, and answers to your questions in our free weekly Q and A.
Transformation Now! A Bishop Spong Society
Welcome to the JohnShelbySpong.com, Transformation Now website!
Join us as we transition toward and co-create Transformation Now, an international society dedicated to perpetuating and expanding on the work and theology of Bishop Spong.
For those seeking to experience Christianity in a new and vibrant way, Bishop John Shelby Spong and his endorsed successors offer fresh spiritual ideas. Over the past four decades, Bishop Spong has become one of the definitive voices for progressive Christianity. As a member of Bishop Spong’s online community, you’ll receive insightful weekly essays, access to all of the essay archives, access to message boards which will connect you with other believers in exile, and answers to your questions in our weekly Q and A.
IMPORTANT UPDATE!!
We will continue to maintain this site indefinitely and although there will be some transitions as we move toward a rotating team of Bishop Spong successors, our vision is that this site will be the foundation of an international society formed to perpetuate and advance his thoughts. All subscribers will continue will have exclusive access to Bishop Spong’s Essay Archives. These hundreds of essays, written by John Spong exclusively for this site over a 16 year period, are excellent for use in research, in churches, study groups, and education.
Click here for a list of our new authors and their bios!
LETTER FROM BISHOP SPONG:
Dear Friends,
As you may have heard, while visiting in Marquette, Michigan I suffered a stroke. The date was September 10th. Since that time I have worked hard to regain my strength. I have been quite successful in that and now have no trouble walking or using my arms. It has been a learning experience. Health is a major demand of my life. I still use my running track each day for about three miles, so I feel most fortunate. The book I was writing on “Charting a New Reformation” will meet its deadline and be at Harper by the due date, the first of March, 2017. I entertained returning to my column, but as the time goes by I no longer have the strength to keep up that schedule, so I have informed Fred Plumer of Progressive Christianity.Org that I will not be able to return to that task. I write to notify you, my readers, and to enable Fred to begin the process to choose a successor.
That is not an easy thing to do for I have loved that column and the relationship I have had with so many of you. I realize that I can no lo longer write, edit and send a column a week out to my readers. I have written this column for sixteen years and it demands an intensity that I no longer profess. Even aided by my wife, who edited every column I ever wrote, cannot make up the difference. So we have decided to give it up.
I want to thank you all for the many letters I have received. More than thirty thousand letters have come to me since the stroke. There was no way I could acknowledge them or even respond to them, but I read every one of them and was warmed by the experience. I am now in my 86th year of life. It has been a good life and I am proud of it all. I wish I could have finished on my schedule, but that was not to be.
I ask you to give your attention to the following letter written with my blessing by my colleagues at Progressive Christianity about the future. I hope it will be the start of a major new contribution to religious journalism,
Sincerely
JOHN SHELBY SPONG
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR SUBSCRIBERS?
Dear Friends,
Over the last few months we have had time to think about what we could do if Jack Spong could not return to writing his regular column for us. We have worked with our team to consider what we might do if this became the eventuality, and I am very excited about what we’ve been able to put together. As a subscriber to the newsletter you have been on the inside circle as we have charted this new reformation. It has been fun, challenging, and sometimes even a little scary going into these uncharted waters. I hope you have gained great value out of it.
The next big step in the new reformation is to put what we have been talking about into widespread practice, and that’s where the next phase of this subscription newsletter comes into play. We have been able to assemble a team of some of the best and brightest authors / theologians / and movement leaders out there today who are taking these bold concepts and enlightenments and putting them into practice in the streets, pews, and on social media.
We have a few well known national lecturers and authors such as Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, Rev. Gretta Vosper, Rev. David Felten, and a close personal friend to Bishop Spong, Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, who was the first person elected bishop in the Episcopal to have his election turned down by the house of Bishops since 1875 on strictly theological grounds. In addition to those veteran voices, we have some of the most compelling leaders of the social media movement out there today, such as “Science” Mike McHargue, Rev. Mark Sandlin, Eric Alexander, and Rev. Roger Wolsey. If you haven’t heard of any of these folks I assure you they are out there in a big way helping to lead the next generations along the new reformation. These authors will be on a regular rotating schedule to write a series of columns that will not be published anywhere else, for our new Bishop Spong inspired and endorsed series, called A New Reformation. We envision this series forming a virtual society around the world that serves to perpetuate and expand upon his thoughts.
Over the coming weeks you will hear more from my team about this exciting new transition, and our cast of contributors. We will continue to repost some of the Spong essays of the past and maybe even an occasional new one if that becomes possible. From here I welcome you to grow with us through our next phase as I believe it will be greatly valuable and entertaining to you; but also because I know your support will be essential in growing our message exponentially around the world from here on out. By continuing to be a subscriber, you will be supporting the infinitely important work that Bishop Spong has shared with our world.
Sincerely,
Fred Plumer, ProgressiveChristianity.org
16 February 2017: Take Care of Number One
By Gretta Vosper Take Care of Number One. And everything else takes care of itself. I know. You think you’ve opened the wrong email or caught a link to the wrong page. This must be from Mind, Body, Green, or A Daily Dose of Motivation. Maybe you’re signed up to …
Read More…
9 February 2017: Japan’s 18th-Century Pioneer of Historical Consciousness
Martin Scorsese recently released a film adaptation of the 1966 novel Silence by Shusaku Endo that traces the persecution of Christians in 17th-century Japan. As a long-time admirer and friend of the Japanese people, I am understandably nervous about how this new film will affect Western perceptions of a country I hold dear, so …
Read More…
2 February 2017: Five Beliefs I Continue to Hold About Jesus
By Eric Alexander As we continue our exciting journey in charting the new reformation, there are many questions we all must grapple with. So I want to begin 2017 with a step back to the basics, as a place on which to build throughout the year. Before diving into the reconstruction however, I want to …
Read More…
Visit Essay Archive
News Items:
8 April 2015: Jesus the Cold Case – Documentary with Bishop Spong
AFTA Award for Best Documentary 2012, Winner Silver and Bronze Medals at The New York Festivals International Film and Television Awards. In his native New Zealand Bryan Bruce writes, directs and hosts the internationally successful crime show THE INVESTIGATOR in which he re- examines unsolved crimes In 2010 he decided to apply his criminal investigative …
Read More…
14 January 2015: Newly Released Book of Essays on The Birth of Jesus by Bishop Spong
Click here to purchase! We are excited to announce this just released book of essays by Bishop John Shelby Spong on Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus. While Luke’s narrative, the most detailed account of the birth of Jesus, is lyrical and inspiring, in The Birth of Jesus, Spong persuasively demonstrates it is allegory. Layer …
Read More…
22 August 2014: The Fourth Gospel in Paper Now Available for Pre-Order
Rescuing John’s Gospel from Its Creedal Captivity John Shelby Spong, bestselling author and popular proponent of a modern, scholarly and authentic Christianity, argues that this last gospel to be written was misinterpreted by the framers of the fourth-century creeds to be a literal account of the life of Jesus when in fact it is a …
Read More…
Visit News Archive
READ ON...
-------
-------
Facebook
Twitter
Website
Email
YouTube
Copyright © 2017 ProgressiveChristianity.org, All rights reserved.
Our mailing address is:
ProgressiveChristianity.org
4810 Point Fosdick Drive NorthWest#80
Gig Harbor, Washington 98335, United States
-------
-------
No comments:
Post a Comment