When we make anything personal, such as guilt and shame, or theological, such as God’s wrath, the beginning and end of our picture of ourselves or God, we are doing an injustice to ourselves and to God.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
False shame and false guilt rip their way into the heart of who we are. In such cases we have to become more acutely aware and suspicious of the “lie” and its deceptive power to control and manipulate us. Real guilt and real shame for living unspiritually, however, calls us to acknowledge and trust what is “true” and its dedicated power to rescue and liberate us. Reckoned right through the mediatory work of the crucified and risen One, who illuminates the path away from the “lie” and to the “true”, brings us the possibility of living spiritually in that the false and its power begins to diminish, while the true and its power begins to flourish.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Considering the recent charges against a number of priests in the Catholic Church, do you think the church should cancel the obligation that they practice celibacy?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
As Christians, given the cultural currents and technological waves of our times, we want to be alert to the impact of the relentless proliferation of images and how they might stifle a new and better way to imagine God, the self, the other, and the world.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
The fascination of living in the thought world of the mind promotes the woeful attempt to be a self contained self. God tells us this is not only foolish, but inevitably impossible as the O(o)ther and nature break in and through the false fortress of self sufficiency. As the walls of pretending are broken down and shattered in creation, in Christ, and the other, recognition of who we truly are will begin to free us from the enticing power of self deception.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
In what ways might being a Christian have something to do with political and economic views and practices?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
The reductionism that infiltrates our general culture has about as much to do with reality as a merry go round. Reducing God, humanity, and the world to the manageable, must be a false target. An embrace of a more expansive picture that integrates imagination and mystery may, in truth, be closer to the mark of the real.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
I continue to be baffled by how many Christians seem to be so bound to the Law. God, they conjecture, is the mighty Lawgiver who condemns them at every turn. It’s as if Christ is absent. Somehow the relevance and superabundance of, “now, therefore, there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,” is remarkably silent in the vocabulary and voice of the one who speaks under the Law. Yet, and this is the power, “Christ condemned sin in flesh so that the just requirement of Law might be fulfilled in us who walk (conduct our lives) not according to flesh, but according to Spirit.” Be free and start walking.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Would you see inalienable human rights as having their roots in, and being a central characteristic of, Christianity?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
No narrative is fully explanatory and totally complete. In this sense, metanarratives do not exist. Be they scientific, theological, or philosophical – all fall short of being able to give us that much sought after “meta” that constantly escapes our grasp. And it’s a good thing it does. To live spiritual lives in this regard, means to embrace the “sufficient” given, and to let go of the dreams and illusions of that which tempts us towards the more than has been made available right now.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Lost in translation. Transversing from good theology to relevant praxis is like learning another language. Getting translation going can be like pushing water uphill. We all too often get stuck somewhere along the way between cutting edge theology and compassionate praxis and therefore find ourselves without a way to speak and act. Yet, being first-rate translators will please God and help change the self, the other, and the world. The art and labor of translation is a necessity if we are going to sufficiently move from theology to praxis and back in credible and authentic ways. Let’s learn to translate and seek to be attuned to the language of motion and dialogue so that theological truth doesn’t end up not touching anyone and not going anywhere.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Do you think that theological and scientific perspectives from a narrow religious fundamentalism have had anything to do with encouraging the more recent rise of virulent forms of atheism?
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Knowledge is an important and crucial part of life. Yet, knowledge is insufficient for authentically redeemed selfhood, which ultimately has to be connected to who and what we love. Love is the sublime action that finishes the story with a flourish.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
Imagination is the elixir of life and the pathway to the discovery of truth, wherever it is to be found. Reason, sense observation, feeling, and experience suffer severe impoverishment without the recognition that imagination is the lynch pin that makes each of them possible and holds them together in a related, yet distinct manner. To be sure, knowing God, the revealing God, and being in community with him, is a possibility that be(s) and becomes much more of an accessible reality in and through imagination.
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Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today
