I hope the 50 or so Reflections of the Week and other posts in 2013 have been helpful, challenging, and spiritually illuminating. A special thanks to you all for taking time to ponder the thoughts expressed here and for your support of my work. Be blessed in Christ.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Monday, December 23, 2013
Reflection for the Week–December 23
There is a broad plurality of recounting in the biblical text. The Torah, for example, expresses law as both the way of life and the road to death. The Gospels portray Jesus going to Jerusalem both once and many times. And in Acts, there are no less than three stories of Paul’s encounter with the Crucified and Risen One. Seems to me, we want to envision this sort of phenomena as a testimony to a variety of sub-plots that find their place in the over-arching plot of God being One God; the Creator, who is out to redeem Israel, humanity, and the world through the Messiah. Think of this rich relation and distinction between sub-plots and plot as something like a masterful symphony, where many musicians are coherently interpreting and playing different parts of the same piece of music in a majestic way.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Friday Musings–December 20
One of the realities of grace means that we cannot assume that where we are in our spiritual journey of faith is going to be good for the other.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Thursday Thought – December 19
Unrealistic expectations and inordinate fears of rejection will be detrimental to living spirituality. Demands to be affirmed, when not met, can result in a heavy critique of the other. And while it’s true that no one wants to be rejected, the key is not whether or not this happens, but how we respond to it when it does.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–December 18
Existential anxiety today drives a fear of losing self, meaning, and truth. Yet, the unwillingness to turn away from being one’s own authority increases. Generally, a hardness of heart and a lack of openness characterize much of the Western mindset, as it becomes fixated on itself and gives up on the possibility of finding adequate responses to its fears. In contrast to that which permeates our age, we desperately need to return to the God who is love, to truth that is sufficiently livable, to redemption in Christ, and to the power of the Spirit ― all of which can contribute to breaking the cycle of fear and lead to being truer selves.
Monday, December 16, 2013
Reflection for the Week–December 16
Many Christians today have given up on being part of the larger biblical story that flows through space and time. Creation, humanity, Israel, and the rescue plan for the world inaugurated by the Messiah, are just too dense and complex. All that matters nowadays is the individual’s story with God. True, this is far from irrelevant, but when it’s all reduced to me and God, the major plot and sub-plots of the narrative are woefully missing. Not only is such a view desacralizing, but it’s downright dehumanizing as well. Desacralizing because it gravely misunderstands who God is and dehumanizing because it seriously misunderstands who humans are.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Friday Musings – December 13
Followers of the Crucified and Risen One are caught up in-between times – already embracing life, but not yet having it fully – is both rich and dense. Life now is comprised of a compilation of escalating virtues, including sensibility (making sense), patience (long-suffering), and humility (carefully configured knowledge with limits), while life in the age to come is saturated in unquantified faith, hope, and the greatest of these love.
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Thursday Thought – December 12
Cultures and contexts are relevant features to be considered, yet they will fail as final determiners of what is true.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–December 11
Sometimes it’s so hard to believe, but nevertheless it’s true. God’s wisdom is wiser than human wisdom and God’s wisdom is Christ and Christ crucified. This seems so foolish and foolishness it is. Yet, God’s foolishness outstrips all false powers and authorities, unmasking their desperate attempts to manipulate and control people for their own ends. If we are to be spiritual people, God’s foolishness should permeate our lives, so that we might be truly wise.
Monday, December 9, 2013
Reflection for the Week–December 9
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 the New Revised: Living Spirituality: Illuminating the Path. Now available on Amazon.
Friday, December 6, 2013
Friday Musings – December 6
Feelings of betrayal and abandonment are awful. Life is never less than these, though remember, it is always so much more. While time, precious time, will be necessary to process and work through our sense of hurt and rejection, love and acceptance remains the backdrop that surpasses it all. Seek, therefore, to fill up the empty spaces with good and thereby embrace the “so much more.”
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Thursday Thought – December 5
Out of the mists of time, God authoritatively re-visits the world in Messiah, who magisterially deals with the plight of Israel and humanity through cross and resurrection.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–December 4
The age long debates about the Christ have reached a stale and musty status quo. As theologians in general and philosophers in particular went down the false path of trying to sort out the ‘what’ of God, his substance – essence, the real question that probably lied on the hearts and minds of early Christians and should resonate with our own, was the mega narrative consideration of ‘who’ God is. This means that the true path of discovery moves in the direction of the ‘identity’ of divinity, rather than its speculative composition. Christ as son of God, for example, is recognized as having the same ‘identity’ as the God of Israel, and then he enacts that ‘identity’ to the awesome degree of a tight compatibility, which didn’t slip out of history, but was noticed and testified to in a plurality of ways. Packed with density, this identification trajectory begins to make good sense, as the interlocking sub-plots connect with the plot, and therefore offer a renewed perception of Messiah and all he means for God, humanity, us, and the world.
Monday, December 2, 2013
Reflection for the Week - December 2
God's way of reconciliation is configured in the death of the Crucified One, which results in not reckoning people's sins against them. God has done everything that there is to be done from his side in order for us to be reconciled. This "logos" of reconciliation has been downloaded into new covenant, which through God's initiation, is written on human hearts and not tablets of stone. But the absolutely massive context for all this is God’s reconciling the world to himself in Christ. This is a big story – a mega-narrative going far beyond personal individualistic salvation, culminating in a new heaven and earth. And if God is reconciling the world to himself in Christ, we are to be ambassadors of this reconciliation, as those through whom God makes his appeal to others.
Check out the New Revised: Living Spiritual Rhythms Book 1. Now available on Amazon.
Friday, November 29, 2013
Friday Musings – November 29
Admitting that there isn’t total truth will not lead to total relativism. Neither are plausible options. What’s true and what’s relative would seem to have to be considered by degrees, not totalities.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Thursday Thought – November 28
Some things can’t be mediated, but where possible and mediation brings us closer to truth than leaving us further away from it, let’s do it.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–November 27
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 questionable 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 and sets us 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 on the glistening horizon of the Divine promise of redemption.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Reflection for the Week – November 25
Grace, Grace, Superabundant Grace. I’m thankful I can trust that God will remember me. I leave my destiny to his imaginative impulse of resurrection.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Friday Musings–November 22
Self-knowledge is often viewed as the need to recognize a total dependence on God. I’m not even sure what a total dependence on God might look like, and if I did, it doesn’t seem like it would essentially have any bearing on several dimensions of self-knowledge.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Thursday Thought – November 21
To come to a better understanding of self-knowledge means recognizing that a key feature of knowing oneself is a participation in being known.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–November 20
Total self-control or total God dependence are not realistic options for life. Totalities are just out of the question. We lack access. Rather, it seems to me that God challenges us to be “dependently independent.” This blended configuration has to be worked out, but it gives us an opportunity to be the creatures he intended us to be, instead of violating ourselves, others, or God through totalizing illusions.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Reflection for the Week–November 18
If the biblical text is not historical in certain places, this is not necessarily a loss of revelatory value. The text has to be taken and read genre by genre. There may be a marked difference, for example, between Genesis 1-3 and the Gospels, though the Gospels may not in every instance be loaded with a historical impulse for them to be packed with sufficiently true testimonies that radiate revelation. A careful reading of the biblical informer then is not an all or nothing enterprise, but an engaging with and being engaged by various interpreted expressions, facts, and stories that God participates in configuring, so that we might be called out of darkness and into light.
Friday, November 15, 2013
Friday Musings–November 15
Beyond the fleeting idolatrous deceptions of the metanarratives of absolutism and relativism, lies the steadfast truth of the Crucified and Risen One.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Thursday Thought–November 14
The quest for independence and neutrality with respect to knowledge is idolatry. It de-humanizes us. To be human is to interpret and be interpreted by.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–November 13
At the emergence of creation, God is depicted as the Divine Transcendent One, who imminently orchestrates a symphony of words. These words become vehicles for creating something aesthetically marvelous and intricately complex, though not free of risk. Creation is a wild and diverse marvel, a purposefully directed wonder. God is the Speaking Sculptor who declares and it unfolds. This God, the Genesis God, is the God who sees, names, replies to, and proclaims that his creation is good for its purpose.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Reflection for the Week–November 11
I would assume that a trust and suspicion dialogue would need to be in place for not only assessing what’s true, but for decoding how to interact with God, self, other, and world in some type of related and distinct manner.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–November 6
Imagination is an essential of life and a pathway to the discovery of truth, wherever it is to be found. Reason, sense observation, feeling, and our experience all 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 the revealing God, and being in community with him, is a possibility that becomes much more of an accessible reality in and through imagination.
Monday, November 4, 2013
Reflection for the Week–November 4
People often say, “If I was born somewhere else, I would believe something else.” This implies that context is determinative for belief. While there is a degree of truth to this, it is a reductionistic subterfuge. Context does play a role in belief, but so do many other features of being in the world. Things are really much more complex, when it comes to belief. Surely, we in the West are more prone to illegitimate context transfer. That is, we desire to suspend belief because it might be different if we were in another context. This is a charade. To imagine that we were born somewhere else would mean to imagine that we are not who we are. We might attempt this, but we will never escape ourselves. Dealing with the matters of the context we are actually living in the midst of, therefore, will be the appropriate trajectory for coming to grips with legitimate belief.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–October 30
Loving someone so much that you give them the freedom to not love you in return may be the closest we ever come to divine love.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Reflection for the Week–October 28
Ethics as expressed in the economy of exchange can never be an end in and of itself. Love, grace, and mercy go beyond an ethical right and wrong, without effacing it. Therefore, following in the footsteps of Christ will be relationally challenging and risky. We may not receive as much as we give. For the journey on this path is traced in and marked out by the economy of gift, which opens up new ways of being, seeing, and living.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–October 23
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 our imagination. Pushing reality to the edges of perception 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.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Reflection for the Week–October 21
The failure of the grand narrative of modernity – achieving it all: absolutism, progress, reason – is shattered. Its replacement is the master narrative of post-modernity – achieving nothing: relativism, play, contradiction. The former attempted to construct a unified story for all humanity, while the latter left behind shards, fragments, and sub-plots with no beginning or end. Unfortunately, many Christians have bought into one or the other of these story lines and uncritically woven it into the biblical faith. Moving away from the power schemes of modern or post-modern meta-narratives is an essential task for believers, if we are to be able to present the gospel in a credible and persuasive manner to a world that has lost its way.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Musings - October 18
This may seem mundane, but it’s explosive. Interpreting something does not make it what it is. The interpreter is always related to, but distinct from, the interpreted.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–October 16
Charity, grace, and love combined with a hunger for truth, should exemplify the lives of Christians. Today is the day that now more than ever calls for a growing and observable reciprocity between what we say and do. As empty lives, broken hearts, and shattered idols have accelerated dramatically in our times, a credible testimony to Christ becomes all the more important and essential to a world that is looking for hope in the midst of despair.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Reflection for the Week–October 14
The demise of pseudo-Christianity in the West is well underway, and rightly so. There are many changes needed to re-present a real faith, but one shift that is essential is for Christians to wake up to having a well thought out belief. Thinking is not poison and it is important to wrestle with ideas in a credible manner, whether we are engaging believers or not. Respectfully listening to and learning from others will enhance our integrity and ability to communicate without forfeiting our freedom to disagree when that runs contrary to God’s truth and love. Escapism and ignorance are not representative of belonging to the living God, who calls us to connect with the world and others, and to participate in shining light into dark places by bringing sufficient explanations into the theater of life and death.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Post Minchuletta Lunch Musings - October 11
If we try to do love without knowledge and ethics, we will be likely to end up further away from love.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–October 9
We are a question to ourselves that we don’t have a complete answer for. While God graciously gives us a sufficient picture, it nevertheless lacks a pristine focus and a crystal clear resolution. This means that we have ample room for exploring contours and adjusting angles, as we grow in our faith. Seeking God’s illumination to better understand the mystery that we are gradually leads us to a carefully configured dynamic of confidence and humility that can be lived with each other and out into the world. In being and becoming testifying agents of the Supreme One - tethered to life in Christ, we are creatively and imaginatively given an ever expanding image that certifies, in spite of not seeing precisely who we are or will be, the deep experience of the mercy and love of God.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Reflection for the Week–October 7
There is a place in living Christian spirituality for being responsible. God wants us to care for what has been given and to accomplish what we can in its midst. Don’t fear doing something well, that is, to the best of your ability, as if God would somehow be against this. Go for it! And if you get there, forget about being arrogant, but by all means do enjoy the moment and appreciate God’s applause.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Reflection for the Week - September 30
Looking for contact with God can sometimes seem to be an arduous task. Often we expect something direct – a clear pathway opening up between God and ourselves, like the wrestling Jacob, the law receiving Moses, or the barren Sarah; yet are disappointed when this does not usually take place. Perhaps our vision would improve if we began to reflect on the indirect ways in which God, through nature, the trustworthy other, and Scripture, can create conduits bridging the distance that we may be experiencing. Being attuned to the manifestation of God through these configurations opens us up to new ways of seeing and perceiving the multifarious touching points between us and the great and mysterious I Am.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Reflection for the Week - September 23
Having significant roles to play in belonging to the drama of creation and salvation is both a task and a joy. Thankfully, God illumines the path so that we can give valid testimony to his existence and redemption, as we work for and rejoice in his kingdom project to renew us and the world.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Reflection for the Week - September 16
Christian truth is something like a complex web of fragile inter-related connections and relations that stretch, but do not break. When truth is pictured in such a reality-image, it allows us a flexibility to explore new possibilities without the fear that if we find more truth, everything we have previously embraced and believed will disintegrate. Not so. I would wager that during our journey some strands will come undone and have to be re-joined elsewhere, while others are going to be innovative and expand the web to another dimension, as it takes on greater intricacy, verve, and splendor.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms–September 12
Many people today are caught in a commitment phobia syndrome. They have a difficult time knowing who and what to trust or be suspicious of. True, because of human limitations there will be appropriate places where it is almost impossible to decide which is which. This is a complicated scenario and frequently produces a stalemate for them. But, when it comes to God, self, other, and world there will also be perspectives that are more or less trustworthy. In some contexts, suspicion will carry greater weight and trust less, yet in others trust will be stronger and suspicion weaker. If this is the case, which seems likely, it means two things are true at the same time. Even though trust and suspicion may sometimes cancel each other out, they do not always do so. If they did, all interpretations would be equal and we would be perpetually stuck; unable of building on anything, having convictions, or confidence in what we know and believe. In fact, so often today, ironically, a trust and suspicion stand-off functions as a metanarrative – a totalizing point of view – that people can end up being committed to without recognizing it. But this is absurd. There are no complete or comprehensive narratives. Furthermore, no one really lives this way. Metanarrative is an illusion. Sliding scales of trust and suspicion are unavoidable. We’re just those kinds of selves, who live in that kind of world.
Monday, September 9, 2013
Reflection for the Week - September 9
Capacity for contact. We’re hard wired for connection with God. But this becomes distorted and mired in self-deception. Think of this along the lines of trust, desire, and imagination. We don’t choose these – they’re just part of who we are. In contrast, we do find ourselves with a choice of whom and what to trust, desire, and imagine. This is where our hard wiring gets short circuited. We choose the wrong who’s and what’s and trust idols over the living God. Graciously, God has set in motion a rescue plan – redemption – that will re-connect our short circuits and take us toward new contact with him.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - September 5
Forgiving others for the deep wounds they have caused in our lives is something that takes time to grow into. But recall that we are beings in time. We exist in and through past, present, and future. Thus, we should not expect instantaneous resolutions. God is patient with us. Forgiving, then, may be a long process and hopefully it will be one that we are challenged to take more seriously as each day goes by.
Monday, September 2, 2013
Reflection for the Week - September 2
Being and becoming Jesus’ follower, according to Mark 8, means to deny self and take up a cross. This does not mean to be a zero, nobody, or nothing, but to set aside self-centered interests, especially with regard to our own messianic ideologies. To do so is cross taking and following Jesus. Self-denial then is denying a particular self – a self-consumed self, a self-sufficient self, a selfish self, which all amount to a false self. Not sure there is anything more radical than this. Breathtaking! Appropriate self-denial makes sense and has the ring of truth, as opposed to the deception that we so often see in the contemporary context, which suggests that a total refusal of self is necessary for following Jesus. On the contrary, God actually wants selves to show up and be accounted for. The question is: who will be present?
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
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Monday, August 26, 2013
Reflection for the Week - August 26
The biblical text is full of worlds. I suggest that there are pertinent signs and resolute traces of God, making himself known in a polyphonic manner. Think of the Garden in Genesis, the burning bush in Exodus, the throne theophaines in Isaiah and Ezekiel, and the resurrection of Jesus. These writings manifest the truth that God is there. Expressed through the language and material context of our world, they also go far beyond it. Therefore, to understand more about God, it is essential to imaginatively enter these worlds as we read about them, and then to inhabit them through our actions.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - August 21
In our Western cultural context there is a profound loss of faith in our capacity to be, to know, and to trust. Marginalizing God and adopting the pretentious capital ‘I’ created this woeful state. This ‘I’ functions as an authority of its own. When suspicion has become absolute, and an end in and of itself, it cripples our ability to be deeply committed to anything or anyone. Left in a supposed glorious dimension of suspension, floating from one experience to another, and snatching at everything, ‘I’ embraces nothing, but ‘I’. Thankfully, God has set a rescue operation in motion through Jesus Christ, which has the power to renew being, knowing, and trusting, while it reshapes suspicion and gives a truer and situated self in exchange for the deceptive ‘I.’
Monday, August 19, 2013
Reflection for the Week - August 19
This visceral longing to be cleansed from our own faults, those perpetrated by others against us, and the burdens of the world, leaves us in a state of searching for redemption. These deep etchings carved into our flesh are like a flow chart leading directly to our battered hearts. Living takes its toll. The challenge before us is to continue the dialogue between the “in spite of” and the “because of” that concerns all of reality and truth. We are followers of the Crucified and Risen One, who are suffering, yet committed to a journey of renewal.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - August 14
Encountering the infinite mystery of another human being is a sacramental invitation and a sacred adventure towards convergence. This coming alongside or together phenomenon will take place at different levels of familiarity. It is never nothing or total. That is, to be unaffected by or irredeemably lost in another is an expression of inappropriate selfhood. Unadulterated oneness is not desirable. We are always to be intensely touched by our engagements with the other, while remaining ourselves.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Reflection for the Week - August 12
Being captive to the ideologies of certainty or uncertainty is like being pulled into a vortex that leads nowhere. Certainty aims to insure us that we have it all together and that everything is straight forward, while uncertainty attempts to illustrate that we don’t have anything together and that nothing is clear. We can become so addicted to polarizations, that moving into the middle seems highly unsatisfactory. Yet, withdrawal symptoms are required and sometimes painful, as uncovering that which binds us and leads us astray is so deeply entrenched in every perspective and dimension of our identities. Letting go will be extremely difficult. Release, however, comes from learning to follow in the footsteps of Christ, which is not least to discover the hidden ideological trends and currents in our lives, and in so doing, to open us up to the possibility of a refigured destiny, culminating in transformation.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - August 7
Real relationships offer us dynamic possibilities to take part in a productive spiral towards mutuality—the narrative drama of a shared space to be and be with the other. Being enmeshed in the beauty of mutuality does not undermine individual freedom, but enhances it. For where responsible trust increases and unreliable suspicion diminishes, within the theater of a redemptive life, we discover a poetics of loving and being loved is a marvel. Sameness and separation, which both happen in a perpetual moment of embrace and release are located in, yet transcend words and actions, as we draw ever closer to who we were meant to be.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Reflection for the Week - August 5
There is a marvelous wonder and a profound mystery in committed relationships. The hope of beauty and fear of danger encircle our hearts and challenge us to move forward in love. We wrestle with “letting go” or “holding on,” with “form” or “freedom,” with “suspicion” or “trust.” On the way from an individual to a mutuality of space—shared lives together at different levels of intensity—we are invited into new ways of being, seeing, and living, where the drama of inoffensive possession neither stifles, nor disdains the narrative of oneself or the other.
Monday, July 29, 2013
Reflection for the Week - July 29
Indictments of the supposed guardians of orthodoxy proliferate throughout the Scriptures. Prophets are continually speaking God’s word to a faithless people who set aside his commands for their own benefit. Jesus is even more to the point with his sarcastic irony towards the religious elite of his day concerning the pretense of washing hands to be clean. Pseudo-orthodoxy called for ceremonial washing before eating. Jesus says this is an absurd charade because it leaves the heart uncleansed. Those today that wave the banner of “we’re orthodox and you’re not,” need to seriously consider where their hearts are, rather than inspecting the hands of everyone else.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Reflection for the Week - July 22
Having our life story re-narrated from a redemptive perspective won’t make the sordid past go away, but it will provide us with a new way of looking at it and its capacity to negatively impact the present. Redeeming memories, through Christ and the power of the Spirit, is one of the ways we are brought into community with the God who lives. And in this community we are sheltered, comforted, and loved so that we in turn might shelter, comfort, and love others.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - July 17
When we assume that everything is headed for destruction, we reject the value of God’s creation. It becomes misused, misunderstood, depleted, and torn apart. All manners of disfiguration blot out creation’s capacity to praise God. Some Christians believe destruction is God’s way with the created, so why care for the planet? Go ahead. Let it go. It’s all headed for the flames anyways. But, this is not the case. For the intensity of redemption precipitates transformation now and then fully at the end of the age. We want, therefore, to promote the worth of the created, and in this way enable creation to give praise to the infinite personal One who created it, even as it too awaits a final and glorious destiny ahead.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Reflection for the Week - July 15
It doesn’t seem to make much sense that God would be angry or threatened when humans accomplish good things. After all, this is one of the chief reasons why we exist. In fact, a key feature of the creational mandate is that humans would step forward and represent God in this manner. When we do this well, as evidently sometimes happens, God should not mind. He may even applaud the accomplishment with both hands. Well done! But I guess we’re not quite sure what to do with this possibility. Usually, we’re told that it is inappropriate to value what we accomplish. Part of the logic of this view is that when we accomplish something good, it can lead to arrogance or idolatry. Yet, I would want to argue that while this is sometimes the case, it isn’t necessarily so. That is, we do have other options. Take this example. Keep accomplishing good, but steer clear of arrogance and idolatry. When we do so, we partially fulfill our Creator’s call. This means there seems to be a place and space to see our accomplishments of good as valuable, without them turning into something that is anti-God.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - July 10
Christians should not reject creation. In other words, we are to explore, care for, and sustain the planet. This is truly living spirituality: to engage our environment in service to God and one another. Since God has not surrendered creation and humanity to desolation, decay, or ultimate death, neither should we resign ourselves to dying forms of spirituality that have no capacity to redeem and renew the created.
From Living Spirituality: Illuminating the Path.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Monday, July 8, 2013
Reflection for the Week - July 8
Breaking down the familiar is hard work. We get so used to what we’re empirically bombarded with that it tends to crowd out any other options. That is, an actual world immersion can deprive us of a possible world vision, which goes far beyond what the literal eye can see. Yet, the real world will always be a hybrid of the two.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - July 3
Tragedy blows through us, disorients our gaze, and leaves us suffering. Groping becomes our sphere of momentary orientation, as we sink into a sense of desperation and helplessness. Aiming to think correctly and practically in this realm is shattered and even space offers us no escape from ourselves and the deeply frustrating experience of loss. Yet, as genuine a dilemma as this is, we are not allowed to dwell in resignation and passivity. Life itself, as configured by the Creator, forces us into and towards a re-orientation mode, where we start to grapple in the darkness with the response of tragic wisdom, as most fully expressed in the Crucified and Risen One. While a configured life and tragic wisdom will not resolve all our conflicts, they offer a fragile, but true conviction and experience that directs us on into the future with hope.
Monday, July 1, 2013
Reflection for the Week - July 1
Living spiritually is enhanced and enriched through the Psalms and their frequent affirmations of and appeals to God’s covenant loyalty. Many of these writings, however, may shock us with their realism. In the midst of our sometimes automatic pilot spirituality, where everything is supposedly bright and happy, some of the Psalms remind us that community with God and the path to life are far from straight forward. There is and will be brokenness, mystery, dark times, judgment, desperate searching, and much more. Though these circumstances frequently lead to illumination and new understanding, arriving there means going through—not taking a detour around—facets of spirituality that may not fit our desired schemes, notions, and expectations of God. In other words, the path may sometimes become difficult and the destination may seem far away, but the hope remains that God will be faithful to lead us forward. The Psalms are a richly textured slice of life with God, and they offer us revelatory insights into humanness and living spirituality. From the New Revised Edition of Living Spirituality: Illuminating the Path.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - June 26
An empire in disarray?
Forging through the empty streets at midnight, I noticed that there were no lights in the windows. Everyone sleeping? Not likely. Power outage? Possibly. There was a strong odor of something dead pervading my senses. Humans? Animals? Not sure. I had no idea. My hands were tightly jammed into my pants pockets and my shoulders hunched up against the glacial cold. It was freezing. Walking more quickly now from block to block, nothing changed. I kept expecting a light, some warmth, and to escape from the stench. Same darkness, same cold, same smell. Recognizing that I was immersed in that which I didn’t choose or determine, I became even more unsettled and alarmed. Who am I? Where am I going? I used to somehow be able to pretend I was in charge. No longer. In actuality, I’m so fragile and continually affected by all that’s in and around me. I’m dust, like grass, and flowers in the field. I will all too soon disappear. But then, I realized that I’m still here on these streets, experiencing fear, feeling cold, and smelling death, as pangs of loneliness over take me, I wandered around desperately searching for life, which appeared to be gone. Terrified, I pressed on.
I trudged through loads of debris strewn all over. This scene reminded me of some of the relational contexts of my own life. What a mess. I used to think that people were hell. I detested the old superficial drabble about the weather or the hum drum of working at SB. Get a life, I thought. But now that I found myself alone, even the trite comments of another person would be cherished. I longed for human contact. A voice. A touch. A face. Frantic. Then, I realized I heard someone. There were muffled words. Hope and excitement flowed through me. My heart felt like it would explode. Even though it was still freezing, I stripped off my tattered blue coat and with my hands began to uncover some rubble. Pieces of concrete and broken glass were piled up. I removed them. It only took a few minutes to realize the voice I heard was not a breathing fleshly being as I, but a cell phone recording, repeating over and over, “the person you have called is not available - try to call again later.” Terrified, I pressed on.
Daylight was breaking. I put on my blue coat again and stuck my hands back in my pockets to try to get warm. I turned right and headed up 19th street, or at least what I think was 19th street. Hard to tell. So much around me appeared the same and I began to realize that it was going to be difficult to escape the sense of being caught in a sort of labyrinth. At that moment, I remembered back to discussions I had about language being a never ending series of signs without referent or meaning. I thought, well, this is what that’s really like, except in a visual manner. I can’t even distinguish one street from another. Pitiful. Stumbling along in a sort of daze, taking a foray in one direction and then another, led me into alleyway. I had to climb over blocks of concrete and be careful to avoid fallen wires setting off weak, but dangerous sparks of dying energy, to get back out into the street. The wind was stronger now and I was in desperate need of shelter. It was still freezing. Turning into one of the few buildings partially intact, I entered what once was a vast museum and library. Books were scattered about. Shelves and tables were toppled over. Paintings were lying in the rubble. I thought to myself, the hallmarks of beauty and learning are shattered. Terrified, I pressed on.
With the violence of darkness receding, it was a relief to be out of the wind and somewhat protected from the cold. I plunged further into the library, deciding to explore later what was left standing in the museum. What a masterful book place this glorious library once was. The stained glass windows here and there, now shattered, must have given a beautiful atmosphere within which to read, ponder, and imagine. Proceeding carefully and moving on through the wreckage, I had to duck to avoid beams perilously hanging from what must have been a magically oval shaped ceiling. Struck by what once was, I began to weep. Overcome by the emotion of my own state of being and shrouded in the mists of time, I had a strange and strong sense of lost splendor. This drove me further into the recesses of my own life, probing the joys and sorrows of my existence. In a flash, I thought about and explored so many previous relationships. Robert, my gay friend, who was a promising opera conductor and gave it all to become a monk, Julie, a whore I went to school with, who ended up married to a plumber and never cheated on him, Winston, an artist, Tina, a ballet dancer, and Vera, the electrician. These people and a barrage of images flooded into what felt like every nerve ending in my body. I couldn’t detect anymore who were and what was real. Fleeting impressions drained me and zapped my feeble strength. Bewildered. Gathering myself together seemed like a long voyage deep into the heart of who I was and what stood before me, but it was probably closer to a matter of minutes before I regained a slender thread of composure. Difficult to tell.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Reflection for the Week - June 24
Wisdom emerges in our lives slowly and sometimes painfully. It invites reflection, question, and struggle. It covers everything from advice on how to take care of daily tasks, to the absurdity of them all. Wisdom, without the illumination of the fear (awe, reverence) of the Lord, loses its way. For true wisdom relates to living spirituality as it deals with facing life in all its ups and downs. God graciously meets us through living, as we shape the contours of daily routines and choices, so that we might learn to wisely follow the path to life. The fear (awe, reverence) of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This loaded saying targets a two-dimensional reality: wisdom as internal; focused on the individual, and as external; situated in a variety of social contexts in the world. Life is to be filled with the gift of the wisdom of God, which applies to the whole of human activity, as we forge ahead on the journey.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
An empire in disarray? - June 20
Forging through the empty streets at midnight, I noticed that there were no lights in the windows. Everyone sleeping? Not likely. Power outage? Possibly. There was a strong odor of something dead pervading my senses. Humans? Animals? Not sure. I had no idea. My hands were tightly jammed into my pants pockets and my shoulders hunched up against the glacial cold. It was freezing. Walking more quickly now from block to block, nothing changed. I kept expecting a light, some warmth, and to escape from the stench. Same darkness, same cold, same smell. Recognizing that I was immersed in that which I didn’t choose or determine, I became even more unsettled and alarmed. Who am I? Where am I going? I used to somehow be able to pretend I was in charge. No longer. In actuality, I’m so fragile and continually affected by all that’s in and around me. I’m dust, like grass, and flowers in the field. I will all too soon disappear. But then, I realized that I’m still here on these streets, experiencing fear, feeling cold, and smelling death, as pangs of loneliness over take me, I wandered around desperately searching for life, which appeared to be gone. Terrified, I pressed on.
I trudged through loads of debris strewn all over. This scene reminded me of some of the relational contexts of my own life. What a mess. I used to think that people were hell. I detested the old superficial drabble about the weather or the hum drum of working at SB. Get a life, I thought. But now that I found myself alone, even the trite comments of another person would be cherished. I longed for human contact. A voice. A touch. A face. Frantic. Then, I realized I heard someone. There were muffled words. Hope and excitement flowed through me. My heart felt like it would explode. Even though it was still freezing, I stripped off my tattered blue coat and with my hands began to uncover some rubble. Pieces of concrete and broken glass were piled up. I removed them. It only took a few minutes to realize the voice I heard was not a breathing fleshly being as I, but a cell phone recording, repeating over and over, “the person you have called is not available - try to call again later.” Terrified, I pressed on.
Daylight was breaking. I put on my blue coat again and stuck my hands back in my pockets to try to get warm. I turned right and headed up 19th street, or at least what I think was 19th street. Hard to tell. So much around me appeared the same and I began to realize that it was going to be difficult to escape the sense of being caught in a sort of labyrinth. At that moment, I remembered back to discussions I had about language being a never ending series of signs without referent or meaning. I thought, well, this is what that’s really like, except in a visual manner. I can’t even distinguish one street from another. Pitiful. Stumbling along in a sort of daze, taking a foray in one direction and then another, led me into alleyway. I had to climb over blocks of concrete and be careful to avoid fallen wires setting off weak, but dangerous sparks of dying energy, to get back out into the street. The wind was stronger now and I was in desperate need of shelter. It was still freezing. Turning into one of the few buildings partially intact, I entered what once was a vast museum and library. Books were scattered about. Shelves and tables were toppled over. Paintings were lying in the rubble. I thought to myself, the hallmarks of beauty and learning are shattered. Terrified, I pressed on.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - June 19
As mesmerizing as it may seem to some of us in the twenty-first century, the God of the Hebrew Testament is an ancient Near Eastern God. That is, God reveals into a human historical context that is far different and more mysterious than our own. It seems to me that it couldn’t have been otherwise if Israel and others were to have any knowledge of him. This ANE God is portrayed as a Warrior, King of the earth, and the Lord mighty in Battle, to mention just a few metaphors, or anthropomorphic―theologically packed expressions. After all, it appears that God is dealing with barbarians, thugs, and louts, which requires severe, yet contextual measures. He represents himself, therefore, as a powerful Egyptian Pharaoh or Mesopotamian King entering into Holy war and he is out to bring about redemption and justice.
The progressive unfolding of the revelation of God in Scripture adds many new metaphors that apply to an understanding of his mission for the whole world. Keeping these in mind will help us to not play off one image against another, as we seek to come to grips with the God of love, truth, justice, and mercy.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Reflection for the Week - June 17
Since what is real has many dimensions, it needs to be approached from a diversity of angles. Try this direction. Symbols, metaphors, and stories are major pathways for uncovering the real. Don’t leave them out and assume that only what you ‘see’ is real. Each of these paths has the capacity to give more to us than we can give to them. There is a depth and richness in this type of saturated phenomena that surpasses what we see and therefore turns us into the ‘seen by.’ I would wager one of the keys for producing and interacting with these paths is imagination, as it gives us access to and a vision for ‘seeing anew.’ Thus, in discovering the real, we have to be open to the significant role that imagination plays in making what is, what is.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms – June 12
God makes space. Let’s see if I can formulate what I’m trying to get at here. Through the created God gives us a space to be. The natural world and relational environment are gifts from God that allow us to dependent on him and independent from him. That is, I think God invites into community with himself, while desiring that we be free and responsible within the context of what has been made. This suggests that God is not offended or rejected when we take care of the earth and each other or when we’re creative and productive. These are some of the reasons that God created a world and that there is more than one human in the first place. God wants us to thrive, make beauty, and have appropriate relationships, and he provides the space for that to happen, since he created a world and persons outside of himself. I don’t believe that this creational space changes over time, but what we do with it is crucial. When it is used for idolatry or self-centeredness, we have a space abuse issue that falsifies who we are and denigrates God. In what then becomes broken space, redemption of space is necessary. Such a redeeming of space will re-frame what God originally gave and renew it, so that we can learn how to live in what has been given, without demanding to be who and what we are not. As followers of Christ, we are not self-determining selves, but neither are we robots. This means we’re tethered to God, yet because of this God chooses to let us go and to see what we will now make of the privilege of space.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Reflection for the Week - June 10
God’s creational diffusion in humanity is a labor of love, which offers us at least three dimensions of who we are. We have been given the capacity to trust, desire, and imagine. These remarkable traits are all embedded in us. That is, we are trusting, desiring, and imagining beings at the outset, and each dimension is a complex part of our hard wiring. If this is the case, we cannot not choose whether to trust, desire, and imagine, since they are already there within us, yet we can choose who and what to trust, desire, and imagine. Sometimes our choices will get it right, though just as often we’ll get it wrong. When the latter takes place through being a self-determining or self-deceived self, we’re faced with the problem of brokenness and damaging ourselves or others. Thankfully, God’s salvfic transmission in Christ offers us, where need be, a new way of choosing that leads to healing and redemption.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - June 5
It seems to me our culture is increasingly one of dislocation and fragmentation. Modernist notions of stability and permanence are rightly being shattered, as they were rooted in deception. In its place postmodern nomads now wander from here to there - to nowhere, but this is not merely a physical or geographical phenomenon, it pertains to the way folks live. False certainty has been replaced by false uncertainty. Flitting from this to that and back again is so common today. Many attempt to re-invent themselves by the hour. No home, no boundaries, no commitments – wandering. These powerful, persuasive, and misleading images are often peddled by our culture and embraced by the crowd. They leave us destitute and floundering. Such forms of the postmodern turn now need to be replaced by a God turn, where true images of what’s creationally and redemptively real abound and offer a safe space to be.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Reflection for the Week - June 3
To hear and read the gospel of Mark is to enter a world. This story is one of conflict and drama, possession and dispossession, subversive reversals of perspective, intrigue, mystery, and strange riddles, with Jesus as its central protagonist. As we enter the story world, we hear and read of struggles over life and death, issues of God and Satan, activities of angels and demons. It is far from a simple or nice story, filled with easy answers or a basic list of rules to follow. Readers, in contrast, are challenged to participate in the story and to lose their lives for Jesus’ sake in order to find them. Mark’s story is presented as a contentful drama to be acted upon. As the world of self serving power, greed, and the addiction to material possessions is shattered, readers are invited to embrace another world that will lead them towards a transformation of being and doing.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - May 29
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 for right now.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Reflection for the Week - May 27
Paul’s rhetoric of equality in 1 Corinthians 7 is astounding. Not only do the bodies of wives belong to their husbands, but the bodies of husbands belong to their wives. Marriage partners are not free to do what they please with their bodies. Spirituality is an earthly-bodily phenomenon. Liberty, asceticism, and idolatry are three false emblems of an overly already-focused spirituality that leads us astray. Misunderstandings abound today. Bodies are worshipped (idolatry), devalued (liberty), or seen as having nothing to do with the spiritual, which is entirely cut off from the physical world (asceticism). The body however - both what it is and what it does - are key parts of living spirituality.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - May 22
An empire in disarray?
Forging through the empty streets at midnight, I noticed that there were no lights in the windows. Everyone sleeping? Not likely. Power outage? Possibly. There was a strong odor of something dead pervading my senses. Humans? Animals? Not sure. I had no idea. My hands were tightly jammed into my pants pockets and my shoulders hunched up against the glacial cold. It was freezing. Walking more quickly now from block to block, nothing changed. I kept expecting a light, some warmth, and to escape from the stench. Same darkness, same cold, same smell. Recognizing that I was immersed in that which I didn’t choose or determine, I became even more unsettled and alarmed. Who am I? Where am I going? I used to somehow be able to pretend I was in charge. No longer. In actuality, I’m so fragile and continually affected by all that’s in and around me. I’m dust, like grass, and flowers in the field. I will all too soon disappear. But then, I realized that I’m still here on these streets, experiencing fear, feeling cold, and smelling death, as pangs of loneliness over take me, I wandered around desperately searching for life, which appeared to be gone. Terrified, I pressed on.
I trudged through loads of debris strewn all over. This scene reminded me of some of the relational contexts of my own life. What a mess. I used to think that people were hell. I detested the old superficial drabble about the weather or the hum drum of working at SB. Get a life, I thought. But now that I found myself alone, even the trite comments of another person would be cherished. I longed for human contact. A voice. A touch. A face. Frantic. Then, I realized I heard someone. There were muffled words. Hope and excitement flowed through me. My heart felt like it would explode. Even though it was still freezing, I stripped off my tattered blue coat and with my hands began to uncover some rubble. Pieces of concrete and broken glass were piled up. I removed them. It only took a few minutes to realize the voice I heard was not a breathing fleshly being as I, but a cell phone recording, repeating over and over, “the person you have called is not available - try to call again later.” Terrified, I pressed on.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Reflection for the Week - May 20
Love is not making it up as we go along. God is love and therefore God gives us direction as to what love is. Love is never less than justice, but always more. And Superabundantly more. The path of love is kind, gentle, and gracious, and doesn’t cherish keeping a list of grievances, but neither is it unchallenging. We are to love God, each other, and all human beings, as we seek to be those who demonstrate the truth that God sent Christ to redeem and restore the world.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms – May 15
While there is a place for suspicion in our lives, it can often dominate and control our engagements with self, other, world, and God. When this happens, suspicion is functioning as a call to itself, and therefore one of the major idols of our times Yes, I can hear you saying, “But suspicion is what makes it all happen.” We sometimes assume that suspicion keeps us safe and provides us with a space to dwell, without having to commit or needing to participate in something that might threaten the status quo. Yet, this is far from the truth, as the beingness of trust pervades our essence and identity. Breaking through the walls of suspicion, which condemn us to be unknown and unloved, is a revolutionary orientation that marks us out for the economy of gift, where the desire to be known and loved is understood, applauded, and welcomed.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Reflection for the Week - May 13
Fiction making may not be self-deceptive. That which leads us outside ourselves is at least potentially informative about what is real and true. Taking a too direct view of who one is – gazing only at oneself – will inevitably be unhelpful. We have to be open to a long detour through signs, symbols, stories, and poems if we hope to arrive at a better understanding and explanation of who we are. But the other and nature also have to be recognized as realities that will confirm a necessary exteriority for recounting a life beyond the material, which is saturated with meaning that can often be expressed through the beauty of fiction.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms – May 8
An empire in disarray?
Forging through the empty streets at midnight, I noticed that there were no lights in the windows. Everyone sleeping? Not likely. Power outage? Possibly. There was a strong odor of something dead pervading my senses. Humans? Animals? Not sure. I had no idea. My hands were tightly jammed into my pants pockets and my shoulders hunched up against the glacial cold. It was freezing. Walking more quickly now from block to block, nothing changed. I kept expecting a light, some warmth, and to escape from the stench. Same darkness, same cold, same smell. Recognizing that I was immersed in that which I didn't choose or determine, I became even more unsettled and alarmed. Who am I? Where am I going? I used to somehow be able to pretend I was in charge. No longer. In actuality, I’m so fragile and continually affected by all that’s in and around me. I’m dust, like grass, and flowers in the field. I will all too soon disappear. But then, I realized that I’m still here on these streets, experiencing fear, feeling cold, and smelling death, as pangs of loneliness over take me, I wander around desperately searching for life, which appears to be gone. Terrified, I pressed on.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Reflection for the Week - May 6
Breathing chaos at daybreak, an armor plated character stands on the horizon and releases fire into the air. Despite the remarkable complexity of dawn and the steely cold appearance of the figure, there is a masterful arrangement to the floating currents of warmth that emerge out of solid mass, and then settle into a new pattern of resilience. Forged in the mists of a winter night, a litany of movements stream out of this personal being and spiral towards a spring day in the material world; the made for love is transformed. Deftly engaged in producing life, the explosive miracle takes place yet again. And that which now flourishes, a blessing for a short time, will soon die.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - May 3
Our culture of excess is exploding. Corrupt politicians, economic scandals, and greedy financial advisors may end up having done us a favor. Their duplicity and dishonesty should be a wake up call that critiques our consuming addictions. The shocking events of the last year are appalling and terrible, but it’s time to learn from them. We’ve journeyed so far from reality that we don’t know where to find it anymore.
We have to move in new directions of truth and integrity, with God at the center, Christ as mediator, and the Spirit and Scripture as our guide. That is, we have to follow in the footsteps of Christ in rejecting the life of progress and plenty as our goals, while we embrace the life of service and sacrifice, which finds it destiny in the cross and resurrection.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Reflection for the Week - April 29
Unmasking and denouncing the fear of exposure is no doubt a step towards trust, but we rightly wrestle with ‘who’ is trustworthy – self, other, God. Surely this is not a venture for the uncritical, yet criticism is never an end in and of itself. Letting go of that which entangles us and moving into the laboratory of trust is a challenging task and a liberating joy that begins to diminish illegitimate coverings, while increasing appropriate disclosure.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Reflection for the Week - April 22
Following in the footsteps of the Crucified and Risen One will sometimes carry with it a myriad of difficult consequences in this life. Recall one. As Jesus went into his home town and was amazed at the lack of faith that he found there, we too may encounter complications with the apparently faithless crowds that surround us. Moving ahead is hard in these circumstances, but necessary. We need courage and to not fear, for God is with us on the journey, even though it may appear to us at certain times, to be arduous and unproductive.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
The ZigZag Café - April 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:
Do you think the claim of being a self-determining self is inauthentic?
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms – April 17
Metaphor, symbol, and story may be first order forms of discourse that need to be taken seriously when we seek to understand God, ourselves, and the world. Poetry, for example, may be a fuller expression of truth than mathematical formulations and imagination a more reliable guide to the real over the unreal.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Reflection for the Week - April 15
Light is such an amazing phenomena, as it is so infused with a surplus of meaning, and therefore difficult to bring to closure. It appears, uncovers, and illumines, to mention just a few metaphors. In stories, Jesus is said to be the light of all people; to be the light that shines in the darkness. He also is recorded as saying: “I am the light of the world,” and that “when we love one another, we inhabit the light.” As I get older, I enjoy the testimony of John more and more. Metaphors and stories of light are indeed perplexing, but that is one of the reasons why they’re attractive. They open up the unseen, engage and surpass the darkness, and point us towards that which cannot be captured or owned.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
The ZigZag Café - April 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:
What, if anything at all, is the most prevalent cultural enemy to the Christian faith?
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms – April 10
Prominent trends in Western culture tend to attempt to give everyone a spiritual and cultural lobotomy – the trite and superficial, silly and absurd, brain dead and uncreative often identify Westerners, and Christians are following close behind. The inevitable plight of the faithful seems to be that we’re always bringing up the rear.
I wager we are experiencing the deep psychosis of cultural despotism that is thoroughly soaked into our Christian flesh and blood, leaving us with empty imaginations. Our bones are disintegrating before our eyes, our hearts are exploding, and there is no strength left in our guts. Too much fast food spirituality.
Instead of subverting, challenging, and rebelling; leading our culture into redemptive ways - into a release from captivity, Christians tamely and politely do what everyone else is doing: participate in the lobotomy. Hail sound bites, venerate relativism, and worship the idol making self. These are some of the proposed present illusions for the good life. What a joke. Following the Crucified and Risen One and not thoughtless, frivolous Western culture, is our Exodus. God, bring us out of the inauthentic and into the land of the living. Free us from the cultural and spiritual lobotomizing taking place and renew and re-shape us in Kingdom fitting ways that confront and expose the allure of the counterfeit and deceptive.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Reflection for the Week - April 8
Christian truth is something like a complex web of fragile inter-related connections and relations that stretch, but do not break. When truth is pictured in such a reality-image, it allows us a flexibility to explore new possibilities without the fear that if we find more truth, everything we have previously embraced and believed will disintegrate. Not so. I would wager that during our journey some strands will come undone and have to be re-joined elsewhere, while others are going to be innovative and expand the web to another dimension, as it takes on greater intricacy, verve, and splendor.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
The ZigZag Café - April 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:
Do you think there are problems associated with being over passionate about work?
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - April 3
On Easter Sunday someone said, “I was at Swiss L’Abri in 1955 and there was no money for food. We prayed and God provided by a gift to be able to buy some.” Well, I thought, today in 2013, we again have no money for food and are praying for God to provide. Please join us.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Reflection for the Week - April 1
As Easter has just passed and we were more intentionally immersed in the death and resurrection of Christ, may this remarkable event and its significance remain with us in new and refreshing ways throughout the year. How grateful we can be that Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God, brought salvation to Israel and the world, was victorious over death through the resurrection, and opened the way into deep and everlasting community with God. On this basis, Easter is a daily affair that allows us to re-live the experience of our own release from captivity in Egypt; our own exodus, which will take us through the Promised Land and eventually into a new heaven and earth.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Thursday, March 28, 2013
The ZigZag Café - March 28
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:
Here in Switzerland we still recognize something of the relevance of Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. That is to say, they’re still days off for most. Do you think religious markers such as these are important for a culture?
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - March 27
Awaken us, oh God, to the power of your forgiveness and grace, so that we might experience your love and share this profound truth and community with others. We often struggle with acceptance and approval. It’s all too easy, in reality, to make a mess of things. May your redemption dear Lord, through the power of the Spirit, intensely slash into our lives and forever remind us that our sins are washed away in the blood of the Crucified One, and please radically affirm in us our astounding directedness of being renewed day by day through the resurrected life of the Risen One, as we move towards our ultimate destiny.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Reflection for the Week - March 25
In the early part of the Genesis narrative, we read that God is the Creator of the world and present in it. Creation exists because this particular God created it. It has a sanctity, but not of its own. Creation, therefore, is special and central for many reasons, most notably because it is created with purpose and a divinely personal touch. We also read that there is a clear biblical mandate for respecting creation; caring for it based on God’s actions and enabling creation to fulfill its purpose of praising God. But the created is not God. The soil, sun and moon, animals, and humans are distinct from God. They are not divine. And God, who is Divine, is not some impersonal force or energy aligned with everything else, but a set-apart, personal God—one who relates, makes covenants, and speaks and acts within creation in an ongoing way. We should not think of God as caught up without restraint in the created world or exclusively identified by it. The Genesis God is the God who sees, names, replies to, and proclaims that what is created is good for its purpose. Thus, God is related to and distinct from creation. When Christians ignore either of these two truths, they do so at their own theological and spiritual peril.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
The ZigZag Café - March 21
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 advice would you give someone struggling with low self-esteem?
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - March 20
I have long struggled with questions of selfhood and identity. There has been so much blurring and blending edges together that viable relationality seems harder and harder to come by. Truth be told, this is my next big project after writing the book on Imagination. My provisional thoughts are moving in this direction. I wager that at least four sources have to be in dialogue for a better picture of who a self is and what makes me who I am. First, God’s point of view is crucial. Acknowledging the problematic of trust and suspicion marks out the landscape and confirms that I need help in discerning appropriate directions. Second, my own perspective is indispensable. There is no legitimate way that I can remove or entirely ignore myself, as my view of myself plays a role concerning whether I’m trustworthy or deceived. Envisioning me in some way or another is part of being human. Third, the responsible other’s outlook is vital. People who know me have a say so as to who I am and can present a challenge of my own pretensions, be they positive or negative. Fourth, the natural world is essential. I can often take nature for granted, but when I do so and get it wrong, I usually end up having to comply. Nature is bigger than I am. When these four relationality ties interact, I should be able to formulate a healthier notion of selfhood and identity, which begins to make sense and becomes fitting for a truer embrace of who me is.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Reflection for the Week - March 18
The New Testament clearly highlights that God is love and that Christians are to love God, themselves, and others. Being loved by God then is an invitation to love. Loving our neighbor as ourselves, loving our enemies, and loving strangers are actions that should identify us as lovers. In a quite stunning and remarkable manner, therefore, God’s love for us opens up possibilities of having a greater love than could ever be the case otherwise.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
The ZigZag Café - March 14
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:
Someone mentioned to me, “When I’m wronged, I assume I’ve done something wrong.” What do you make of this person’s assumption?
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - March 13
There is so much controversy about the interpretation of early Genesis nowadays that I have devoted some time and energy to trying to better understand the text. This is not the place to go into great detail about my work, but I would like to offer a few quick thoughts for your consideration.
Two of my reasons for delving more deeply into Genesis are: it is a complex and much debated story about times past, and it is such a remarkably unique text, when compared to other ancient Near Eastern creation accounts. Genesis, for example, de–deifies nature and humanity, as no other story of beginnings does. What is avant-garde and always will be about the creation stories in Genesis 1-3, is their relentless focus, not on the cosmic architecture of nature, but on relationality: God, humanity, and the world. This perspective provides us with both a meaningful structure for and a re-description of reality, which places these chapters in a sacred and destiny oriented context that invites us to make contact with the Creator. In this sense, the text is a living text that recycles our interpretive trajectory through a poetic network of divine and creaturely actions, purposes, and goals.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Reflection for the Week - March 11
There is an acute and desperate need for creating genuine and authentic Christian communities. Churches exist in abundance, but many believers today are sitting on the sidelines about to give up on the faith, or abandoning the church altogether. Searching and perceptive Christians are becoming refugees in what should be the land of the living. When buildings, programs, and events are prioritized above people, we lose the path toward true love and community. In order to reverse our spiritual impoverishment, we need God’s help. It is imperative to move in new directions. Our churches ought to first be true communities. People are the priority. Hospitality, love, and forgiveness are to take precedence, and our communities should be places of alluring redemptive grace. Christian communities, therefore, are not to be “other-worldly,” but “this-worldly.” We are to be down-to-earth, sharing life together in real ways, being real people, and living in the real world. And Christ is to be Lord of it all.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
The ZigZag Café - March 7
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, “I’m not asking for anything more from them than I would expect from myself.” How should Christians live with their expectations of others?
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - March 6
In theory, Christians acknowledge the importance of having the Bible as the map for the journey, but in practice they tend to ignore it in favor of what they interpret as the direct intervention and revelation of the Spirit. Personal and immediate prompting's are assumed to be more spiritual than a careful contemplation of the map. And at what cost? The expense is spiritual impoverishment. There are an unfortunate set of similarities between some of the make-it-up-as-we-go-along views in our culture, and those operating in some Christian circles. These should remind us of our tendency toward false absolutization and the danger of self-deception. Lamentably, biblical map studies often turn into mumbo jumbo, where ambiguity and hyper-subjectivity are as prominent as they are in non-Christian contexts. Cultivated and honed map-reading skills are less prevalent and regrettably marginalized when it comes to our views of spirituality.
Let’s say you meet with twenty-four other people for a Bible study where you all read the same part of the Scriptural map. But then you all “discover” that the Spirit revealed a different interpretation of the map to each of you. And you all piously maintain that your perspective was given to you directly from the Spirit. That would mean that the Spirit is telling each of you to head off in different directions according to your own personal revelation. While this might be possible, it is highly unlikely. This view is closer to relativism than it is to the guidance of the Spirit. The high risk of interpretive self-deception here must not go unchecked.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Reflection for the Week - March 4
In some churches, people currently receive teaching about kingdom life, kingdom theology, kingdom prosperity, and so on. They learn that the Kingdom of God has already arrived in its fullness and everything is here for the taking. Other churches teach their congregations that the Kingdom of God is important, but not for this present life. These people are taught that the Kingdom of God has not yet arrived, but will at some point in the future. Still other churches completely ignore the Kingdom of God, attaching little or no importance to it whatsoever. All three of these orientations are unhelpful. Better to think of the Kingdom of God as a dynamic action and rule that includes God as Creator, God as love, God as judge, God as the covenant-making King of the universe and Israel. This reigning activity was manifested in the Messiah, the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, the church, redemption now, and ultimately final blessing and judgment on the coming day of Christ. The Kingdom of God, therefore, is to be understood as both already present and not yet complete. Churches that polarize, by teaching that the Kingdom of God is either already fully present, not yet present at all, or to be paid no attention to, fail to adequately represent this tensional perspective. An already/not yet tension is closer to biblical narrative, than a either/or resolution.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
The ZigZag Café - February 28
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 is escapism?
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - February 27
In addition to Freud’s atheism, there are many others, including Nietzsche, Barthes, and Foucault, who argue that God is a contradiction to life, for the death of the Author, and that the strategic alignments of power interests are out to control knowledge, relationships, and truth. While these thinkers have some salient insights, their wayward conclusions have contributed to the cultural construction and propagation of a cynical, pessimistic, and decentered self. Yet, in the face of such views, the counter-cultural and always avant-garde perspective of Christian promise and hope defies this manufactured status quo. Destroying idols and listening to symbols is one of the keys that unlock living spirituality and possibilities for engaging the God of love and truth. When this takes place we are no longer trapped within a network of self – other power plays that exploit us, but we are embraced by a Divine love without measure, where freedom leads to redemption and transformation. Being loved in this manner supplies us with a new self and an identity that goes far beyond any of our own making.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Reflection for the Week - February 25
Like razor wire slashing through flesh, many Christians and churches leave people spiritually lacerated. There seems to be no limits to the piercing levels of impoverishment, as Christianity slides towards dehumanization, theological irrelevance, and cultural isolation. Hidden comfortable idolatry vilifies integrity and credibility, and outright indifference to truth and reality shreds hearts and minds. When fine sounding soothing rhetoric and clever speech take charge, God’s place of radical dispute and testimony has been tarnished and stained. Reversal, with God’s help, has to start by dismantling the razor wire. Generating humanness, mercy, compassion, redemption, and love will be vital and significant steps towards severing that which kills, and bringing healing to the deep wounds that cut people off from life.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Friday Poetry - February 22
Epitaph
Long ago love had been lost,
Won over so easily
By the ever changing winds of fortune
Swept away by spending more than any cost
Rocky shores prevented ships from docking
To bring cherished cargo,
New resources to those starving in safe
White buildings with blinking crosses
Navigating sovereign thickets,
Never’d, till it didn’t matter anymore
Truth blocked and sealed the doors and windows
Spellbound hiding in warping blindness
Blood dripped from dead dogs eyes,
Follow me, I’ll lead you heavenward
What ever your dreams conceive in clean
White buildings with blinking crosses
Sterile laws beckon
To those seeking cleansing here,
Baptized in shame and guilt pervading
Loosen the dam and let freedom flow
Streaming from a death neglected,
Buried under hearts of stone
Soliciting alms while
Prostitutes, vagrants, strangers assailing,
A losing trick to keep from finding escape
Suffocating inside the walls of fated
White buildings with blinking crosses
Grace untold, the secret kept
To those forgetting where it
Blossoms from created
Earthen hollowed trees and
Spacious fields of vine and branch
Pierced illusions never fading,
Oh deathly sacramental longings betrayed
On the register of time exploding
White buildings with blinking crosses
Thursday, February 21, 2013
The ZigZag Café - February 21
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, if at all, might an experience of Divine love vary from, or feel different than, human love?
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - February 20
Unfortunately, Christians tend to embrace a vicious cycle of self-introspection that revolves around in a continual cadence of navel gazing, where they get lost in the circle of the same. Not that introspection is all bad, but when it’s all that there is, it becomes highly dubious. The end result of this is being a self-centered self. Living spirituality, by contrast, leaves plenty of room for self examination, but it would promote another self: a redeemed self. This self exists in contact with and in dependence on the Other and others, the biblical text, and the world, which allows for the possibility of going far beyond the narrow enclosure of its self.
Monday, February 18, 2013
Reflection for the Week - February 18
To follow after Jesus is to first deny oneself. Self denial then is a denying of a particular self – a self centered self, a self sufficient self, a messiah making self, a selfish self: = a false self. This does not mean to become nothing, but it means to put one’s counterfeit self interests aside, especially with regard to messianic ideology, and to embrace the Other, namely God and then the things of God. Bogus imaginary constructs and unrealistic hopes can often turn us into our own messiah makers. Messiah making is a risky and dangerous enterprise and something that we can all tend to do in one way or the other. Better to discover and explore the steps of the Crucified and Risen One, which has the explosive potential of leading us in the direction of being true selves.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Friday, February 15, 2013
Friday Poetry - February 15
Coleridge is thought provoking.
What is Life?
Resembles Life what once was held of Light,
Too ample in itself for human sight?
An absolute Self—an element ungrounded-
All, that we see, all colours of all shade
By encroach of darkness made?-
Is very life by consciousness unbounded?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath,
A war-embrace of wrestling Life and Death?
Written around 1805.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
The ZigZag Café - February 14
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 stance should Christians take to culture (let’s say: human creation of meaning)?
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - February 13
We want to be loved and accepted, but we quickly find out that these realities are not for sale – or to be envisioned as consumer products. The economy of gift (grace of giving without receiving back) over that of exchange (if you give to me, I’ll give to you), will open up horizons that provide us with a vision of the Invisible One. He engaged and shattered the requirements of “like for like” through the donation of the Crucified and Risen One, so that we might be gifted with a trustworthy love and acceptance without limits.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Reflection for the Week - February 11
From my forthcoming book: Living Imagination. J-P. Sartre’s Nausea captures and exposes crucial issues concerning the real and the empty seduction of the unreal. Antoine, the book’s narrator, is left with a severe and devastating case of nausea – and nausea – and more nausea. Life is like that, but in his eyes at least it’s real. This bleak and haunting novel should cause us to reflect seriously on reality, the status of image, the notion of the real and unreal, and who we are in relation to both. The radical division, in Sartre’s view, between the real as perception and the unreal as imagination forces imagination to become more and more isolated and wholly beyond the real. As Antoine, who was left with the choice between living or telling, so also Sartre leaves us with the choice between real or imaginary nothing. According to Sartre, to enter into the imaginary is to de-realize oneself, while to enter the real is to realize oneself. Yet, we may question whether human experience, one of Sartre’s major interests, is ever so pristinely distinct, without at some point also being related. Perhaps, a more adequate view would be to see imagination and perception as related and distinct, with neither having, nor offering exclusive claims to the real, which is dependent on far more than what we imagine or perceive.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Friday Poetry - February 8
I like these thoughts from Wordsworth.
In such communion, not from terror free,
While yet a child, and long before his time,
Had he perceived the presence and the power
Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed
So vividly great objects that they lay
Upon his mind like substances, whose presence
Perplexed the bodily sense. He had received
A precious gift; for, as he grew in years, 140
With these impressions would he still compare
All his remembrances, thoughts, shapes, and forms;
And, being still unsatisfied with aught
Of dimmer character, he thence attained
An active power to fasten images
Upon his brain; and on their pictured lines
Intensely brooded, even till they acquired
The liveliness of dreams. Nor did he fail,
While yet a child, with a child's eagerness
Incessantly to turn his ear and eye 150
On all things which the moving seasons brought
To feed such appetite--nor this alone
Appeased his yearning:--in the after-day
Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn,
And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags
He sate, and even in their fixed lineaments,
Or from the power of a peculiar eye,
Or by creative feeling overborne,
Or by predominance of thought oppressed,
Even in their fixed and steady lineaments 160
He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind,
Expression ever varying!
The Excursion - The Wanderer - Book first - around 1814
Thursday, February 7, 2013
The ZigZag Café - February 7
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 a Christian can have non-Christian friends?
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - February 6
We are damaged agents - like leaves fluttering in the winds of time. Pain, anger, and tragedy may beset us and it is helpful, through not always satisfactory, to know that we’re in the good company of Sarah, Job, Jeremiah, Mary, and Jesus. Their plight and its expression may be preserved for us for a reason. That is, we too may clamor for forms of speech that will give voice to our cry in the wilderness, as we long to be heard, responded to, released, and redeemed.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Reflection for the Week - February 4
Eyes burning and seared by the present views and circumstances of life blurs a passion for the possible of a different future, yet God has promised to renew the world and we must trust and act on his ability to do so. Learning to perceive the imprint of the future on the present is no easy task. We sometimes stray from the visionary and realistic, blindly immersed in the apparent unchanging status quo that only recycles everything into the same. Imaginary orientations rooted in God’s manifestations of hope, by contrast, open up and broaden our horizons toward change, and help us to look and see again.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
The ZigZag Café - January 31
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 does God speak to you?
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - January 30
When our faith in God configuration is rigid and brittle, we’re going to be in for problems. As new ideas surface and gain traction, particularly with respect to the natural world informer, an inflexible paradigm will produce fear rather than engagement. Unbending formulations of God, self, other, and world are unsustainable. They will be credibly forced to make a hasty retreat in due honesty, as protecting and deferring play the role of a meta-narrative – a totalizing story that explains everything – which suddenly or gradually collapses and is shown up to be what it always was: an illusion. Christians don’t want to embrace illusions, but a real world that makes sense, on the levels that we can understand it. There are inevitably going to be modifications and revisions that become necessary for living an integrated faith configuration with clout, which offers the capacity to freely explore the reaches of the known and unknown that open possibilities for contact with the Infinite One. Thus, a flexible, more elastic perspective is pertinent for us to adopt, since it’s truer in allowing for variations based on fresh data, albeit within degrees, of what a legitimate faith in God looks like.
A report on the Swiss news last night mentioned that the EPFL – the world renown polytechnic in Lausanne, has received, I believe, a billion Euro for “the brain project” – mapping the brain, etc. will have implications for theism and Christianity, which are going to be fascinating. Stay tuned!
Monday, January 28, 2013
Reflection for the Week - January 28
Sometimes we sense a loss of contact with God. We grope around in darkness longing for light and wander through the desert thirsting for a cup of water. When this happens we need to cling to God and his promises, to the truth that we are not on our own, and to the reality that we have a destiny of being transformed into the image of Christ.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
The ZigZag Café - January 24
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 non-belief is a human possibility, or do we always believe in something or someone?
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Living Spiritual Rhythms - January 23
Dismantling naïveté can be a painful, yet rewarding process if it results in a more careful and critical formulation of beliefs. But this process is often short circuited. A shattered naïveté usually results in recognizing that one’s beliefs did not merit the trust that one invested in them. We can call this a growing awareness of the need to be critical of our beliefs, let’s say, a move into the mode of criticism. This is a necessary and good thing. Problem is that there is a tendency to stop here, since suspicion now seems so much more reliable than trust (though in reality, it really isn’t because trust is a center of gravity at the core of being human and thus we are obliged to trust our suspicions). When the critical mode, valid as it is, persists as a monologue, the end of the story can tend to become criticism itself, and this in turn can emerge into skepticism or relativism. It is imperative, therefore, that we find ways to credibly move through the critical mode, not back to a rightly left behind naïveté, but towards a critical trust and sustainable beliefs. When this takes place, we are able to be re-engaged in a life mode – a life setting dialogue that calls us to explore fresh options that transcend the toxicity of false endings and their emergent illusions.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Reflection for the Week - January 21
God, I’m giving you a chance to show up and be accounted for. I have not been the most careful in dealing with my financial responsibilities, so I would like you to provide a way for me to pay my bills. There is also the small matter of a new job, and not just any job, but direct me to the right job for me. Furthermore, my accommodation is no longer satisfactory, and I would like you to lead me into finding a place that’s more suitable for me. If you don’t take care of my needs now and give me something to go on, then you must not love me or be personally involved in my life.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
The ZigZag Café - January 17
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:
A Christian recently told me, “I want to move from being self-indulgent to being selfless.” What do you make of such a desire?
Cross Country Skiing -10C in the Alps. Dents in the distance.
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