A soft glow drifts over the open sky and points to the horizons of far off worlds. In this distant and mysterious land, light is tethered to the gentle breeze that flows through the deep. This appears to be like a tender whisper from beyond the savage pulse of the long night of conflict and rage. There are no perfect pictures of illumination, or anything else for that matter. Given pictures are partially opaque, yet relevantly clear, as the sufficiency of this world morphs into others as possible worlds that present new ways of being, seeing, and living.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
Reflection for the Week - October 29
A Christian view of spirituality affirms the truth that there is a creational spirituality. That is, the created world is a world that we are to explore, care for, and sustain as stewards of what has been made. Living and true spirituality does not reject the material world, but engages it in service of God. We are, therefore, to imaginatively participate in the earthly and contribute to bringing goodness to all areas of life. As God has not left creation or humans to desolation, decay, or ultimate death, neither should we consent to dying forms of spirituality that have no capacity to redeem and renew the created.
From Living Spirituality: Illuminating the Path.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today - October 24
Reading strategies for Scripture, self, other, and the world should have a similarity. That is, not too objective, nor too subjective. These phenomena are not to be mere objects of analysis and study or simply personal subjects of possession and control, but understood as related and distinct in tension. Falling into compartmentalized or collapsing approaches will lead to a short circuiting of making necessary tensional connections that will enhance and deepen our spirituality. These connections will help us to recognize that there are new possibilities and fresh discoveries that pave the way for drawing closer to God, his truth, and love, which are then to be lived out into the world.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Reflection for the Week - October 22
The aim of the Christian life is not to spend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to figure out how and when God answers prayer, especially “for me,” but to love God, follow in the footsteps of Christ, love others, and to be and do this in the power of the Spirit. It seems likely that God responds to prayer in accordance with his Kingdom purposes – not offering parking places closer to the mall or providing special effects in the sky on an afternoon walk, especially “for me.” God, in my modest estimation, is not doing everything in micro-managing the world on my behalf, nor is God on stand-by doing nothing at all in response to prayer. If that’s the case, the line of Divine action is not fixed, but is a moving dynamic that has the capacity bring about God’s purposes through the very guts of the material world that God has caused to exist in the first place. How and when that happens, it seems, will remain a mystery that goes beyond human representation.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
The ZigZag Café - October 18
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:
How would you describe the role of the Holy Spirit today?
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today - October 17
The incisive depiction of self-deception found in the biblical text is striking. We are never the selves we simply assume ourselves to be. Consequently, self-designation for good or ill is severely limited, leaving us adrift in a sea of useless options. There can be no doubt about it – we are in need of more - being and becoming new selves. Receiving the gift of a new self anchored in a call from beyond generated by the love of the Infinite One, deconstructs the death force of manipulative power strategies of exploitation and sets one on the pathway to life with all its detours and complexities. Vistas of past, present, and future now opened up along the journey are breathtaking, as time and story coalesce and separate in the glistening horizon of the Divine promise of redemption.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Reflection for the Week - October 15
Unfortunately, in our context today, the defense of the gospel all too often becomes a matter of self-interest, which is akin to defending one’s own position at all costs. In this scenario, there is little or no understanding of or openness to pertinent questions that may undermine what is so tenaciously held on to, and different interpretations of the biblical text and natural world are ignored or dismissed without serious consideration. Empty heads are assumed to equate full hearts, but in my assessment this configuration is more likely to be an “apologetics of the uninformed self,” which tends to hold sway in many evangelical type circles and amounts to the blind leading the blind. Challenge and engagement are the new directions for apologetics, as our credibility and integrity are on the line in a culture that is fast becoming post-Christian.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
The ZigZag Café - October 11
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:
C. S. Lewis, like Paul Ricoeur, views imagination through its capacity to understand the depths of reality, and to facilitate a mode of being in the world that is also directed beyond it. Imagination is not the organ of truth, but its condition. What do you think?
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today - October 10
Telling one’s own story is insufficient for knowing who one is. One’s own story will surely have little traction if it seeks to be the referent for itself, as self-referring story implodes in discounting the other, and is inevitably unsatisfactory in that it always returns to the same. Only when one places one’s story within the context of God’s story, recounted through the biblical text and the natural world informers, does one begin to discover more about whom one truly is. True knowledge of oneself therefore, is dependent on the God who makes contact and in connecting up one’s own recounting with this Divine storyteller.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Reflection for the Week - October 8
The force of various biblical genres such as narrative, prophecy, letter, hymn, law, and wisdom is that each offers a unique way of perceiving God and reality, which in turn form a hermeneutic of ‘contact’ that names God, though not in a comprehensive manner. This intertextual ‘contact’ framing requires a dialogical orientation between one genre and another, while at the same time it presents significant, though worthwhile challenges to the formulation of an integrated perspective. ‘Contact’ opens up possibilities for a wide and imaginative trajectory of interpretation, as it turns out that God and reality are always more than any single textual representation can offer.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
The ZigZag Café - October 4
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:
Authenticity can mean a variety of things, including honesty, integrity, and credibility. If these meanings are understood as connected to the meaning of authenticity, does authenticity have, at least partially, to be given and received, or can we attain it on our own?
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Spiritual Rhythms of Life for Today - October 3
The eschatological plotline of the biblical narrative is deeply connected to our ability to imagine. God’s promised future can only be accessed through our imaginations, but this picture helps us live lives of imaginative faith, love, and hope in the present, where redemption and renewal are real possibilities to be embraced and embodied. Since we are tethered to the already and acquainted with the not yet, this gives us a new perspective for ‘seeing’ reality in a fuller, yet not complete way. While the parts and the whole imaginatively fit together, there is always more to be imagined and lived, as the relation and distinction between them will never entirely disappear.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Reflection for the Week - October 1
Many chemical companies and drug manufacturers couldn’t give a rip about us. They’re in it, bottom line, for the money. The logic probably runs something like this. “We’ll make more millions by selling this crap before it’s found out to be toxic, than we’ll ever be fined for producing pollution, suffering, and death. Go for it.” Indeed, while this idol of wealth cunningly operates behind the closed doors of power and in the hidden halls of greed, we’re fed the worthless public rhetoric that a concern for humanity and for the environment are at the heart of corporate efforts to make the world a better place. Beware! Evil does not go unseen or unaccounted for.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
