Fallen leaves, so fragile, flutter in the breeze. The dance illuminates, amidst a torrent of voices raging, as beauty fades away. Caught in the throes of decay and winter light opens the possibility of an astonishing renewal, not beyond recognition, yet vague and visceral. To await its coming requires the patience of change in the unchanging, a mystery in speech and act, arising to a disclosure of reality.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Monday, December 26, 2011
Reflection for the Week
I hope the 50 or so Reflections of the Week and other posts this year have been helpful, challenging, and spiritually illuminating. A special thanks to you for taking time to ponder the thoughts expressed here, make comments, and support this blog. Every blessing in Christ to you all this Christmas season.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
The ZigZag Café
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:
Why did Word become flesh?
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
To not be resigned to death in the midst of chaos and uncertainty is a challenge and a destiny. Fighting against addiction and abuse - the injustice of tolerance – takes hard work and deep commitment. As life frays from the center to the edges and back, death frequently looms large on the horizon of existence. Its rhetorical flourishes seek to persuade and convince that this is the final space. Being submerged into escapes from such closure only enslaves and leads to false release. Yet life, worn as it may be, is an ever present battle worth taking up necessary measures to defend and embrace.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Reflection for the Week
Deeply engraved with complexity and mysteriously forged by extravagance, the drama of the biblical and natural world informers presents significant challenges for readers, taking us to the limits of imagination. Pushing reality to the edges raises questions and issues that mustn’t be ignored. To take each informer seriously means being open to learning and embracing truth wherever it is to be found.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The ZigZag Café
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:
What’s most important to you at Christmas time?
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Falling into a blood red sky breaks open a mode of being. Touching – touched, fearing – feared, breathing – breathed. Alive. The jagged flow of wispy clouds dancing across a glow of fractured light stuns the senses out of dreams and sleep, producing a clawing at and groping towards one world, while dazedly departing from another. Fragile and fleeting, is so the dawn, always and only a beginning for today’s challenging encounters of trust and suspicion, which await a cautious engagement, before a mystifying dusk settles on heart and soul.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Reflection for the Week
Intentionality is a moveable key to fidelity and commitment. Pledging ourselves to God and the other therefore far surpasses any form of self-constancy with its desperate staticity and facile regulation of obstacles and problems. Placing inertia, mired in stoicism over changing desire and challenging risk, will decrease our capacity to be ‘available.’ Autonomous selves are an untruthful fiction, yet so frequently a pretension embraced by people today. Shattering self-constancy brings release from falsehood and ‘availability’ opens us up to a true dialogue with the O(o)ther to whom an obligation is owed. Keeping promises is just and being intentional in motion. Not keeping promises is unjust and it betrays both self and O(o)ther.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
The ZigZag Café
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:
Some say democracy is born out of revolution – a rejection of totalitarianism. Be that as it may, democracy seems to face a legitimation crisis because it lacks any foundation for living together. What do you think about a social contact of fairness based on reason and respect filling the lack?
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today
Imaginatively reading the biblical text will open us up to connecting with the characters of the stories and with the living God who is revealed through them. Becoming many people through reading this marvelous literature, yet still being oneself is one of the remarkable benefits of imagination. To see with other eyes, hear with other ears, and know with other knowers is a privilege and allows us to go beyond the closed circle of ourselves. Here, we transcend ourselves and are surely more ourselves when we do. Imagination breaks through space and time. When this takes place, we are mysteriously transformed and richly contributed to in luminous ways.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Reflection for the Week
Tragic wisdom and practical wisdom are related and distinct. They are related as to wisdom of action, but distinct in the sense that the tragic creates difficult tensions and irresolvable problems. Tragedy disorients action, yet practice becomes the best response of reorientation to the inevitable place of lament. The itinerary of reconciliation – a poetics of wisdom – avoids both univocity and arbitrariness and charts a course through the maze of life’s conflicts, offering a transition from catharsis to conviction, which is rooted in a meditation on the cross and the mediation of the incarnation and resurrection.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Trajectories
We are increasingly facing uncertain times today. As natural disasters, financial chaos, and unprecedented tragedies proliferate, please pray for all those who are suffering. Pray that relief efforts would actually be able to get to the people in need and that the power and truth of the gospel would be made known in all the earth. Christ is Lord of all of life now and together we are to join in to be a part of God’s unfolding drama of his mission to humanity and the world. May God help us to be living in the light of the return of Christ, as it relates to present expectation and action towards social, political, and ethical transformation, for we await a redeemer who will renew all things. Therefore, in the apostle Paul’s terms, we are not to be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we might discern God’s will and offer ourselves as living sacrifices in doing it.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
The ZigZag Café
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, or why do you think, that Christianity has a credible voice in today’s world?
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