Patchwork Story

We have grown accustomed to speaking of the historical Jesus as though we have a relatively full picture of an actual Galilean Jew. Let me correct that careless language by suggesting . . . we do not have the materials to construct a biography of the person [Jesus]. ~Robert Funk, “The Jesus Seminar as Community of Faith,” Fall 2004 Jesus Seminar Paper, p. 55, via David Zollars

We’ve done pretty well with the pieces we’ve been given. Would a full biography have been better? His emphasis on the “kingdom of God” is quite enough for faith. ~jpc

We give thanks for the word, however it comes. Namaste.

image: www2.kenyon.edu/.../Suydam/Reln225/Syl225.htm

So Much Heresy

The historic battles within monotheism are legendary: Hebrews vs. Christians, Sunnis vs. Shiites, Catholics vs. Protestants, Lutherans vs. Calvinists, Church of England vs. dissenters, Puritans vs. Baptists, and so many others. Currently some Islamic extremists have a hard time deciding who they despise more: Is it the evil Christian and Jewish heretics, or is it the evil Muslims heretics? So much heresy, so little time. ~James Foley, “Enough With the ‘One God’ Stuff,” alternet.org, 9/27/06, via Harry Wainwright

“Heresy” is a word that means picking and choosing from your holy writ what makes sense to you (or your tribe) for whatever good or bad reasons. I don’t count Deuteronomy a book to absolutely live by. Does that make me a heretic? We all pick and choose, best I can tell. ~jpc

“Thus saith the Lord!” is quite a stretch. Namaste.

image: www.cccs.uq.edu.au/?page=40637

Sunday Dialogue (XXV)

Journer: What do I have to do to change?

Nez: As a student* says, “Sometimes you just have to look reality in the eye and deny it.”

Journer: I don’t understand.

Nez: One day a tyke denies he can’t walk and starts walking.

______
* Garrison Keillor

image: grandson JPC taking first steps, in fascination and fear

Yoked All Passions

Far from being desireless – look at Gandhi, Catherine of Sienna, St.Theresa, St. Francis – the man or woman who realizes God has yoked all passions to the over-riding desire to give and love and serve. In that unification we can see not the extinction of personality but its full blossoming. ~Eknath Easwaren, Introduction to The Bhagavad Gita, via Mariam and Stan Gibson

This is like Wilber’s “The great yogis, saints and sages . . . [are] great big egos, plugged into the dynamic Ground and Goal of the Kosmos itself” (9/3/05 reflection here from One Taste). ~jpc

We give thanks for whatever “personality” we are as we “give and love and serve.” Namaste.

image: National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi http://www.shrinesf.org/

Doesn't Make Any Sense

Conversation after seeing the documentary movie “In The Arms of Strangers,” http://www2.warnerbros.com/intothearmsofstrangers, about 10,000 Jewish children transported out of Germany to the UK, http://www.kindertransport.org/history.html:

Grandson Nolan [8] asked, “Didn’t those people who listened to Hitler realize they were his slaves? Why didn’t the Jews fight back?” His sister Kaitlyn [10] asked, “Can something like this happen today?” Her father, Jeremiah, told her it is happening today, that thousands are being killed because of their religion. She said, “That’s very sad. It doesn’t make any sense!” ~jpc

May we be awakened to what makes sense. Namaste.

Note: one of the 10,000 children (13-years-old then) led a discussion about the movie

image from documentary: children preparing to leave Berlin Charlottenburg station, May 1939

Revolution of Human Consciousness

Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better . . . and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed . . . will be unavoidable. ~Vaclav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia/ Czech Republic (1989-2003), via David Zollars

Strange language for a national leader. I believe this revolution in human consciousness is going strong, and hopefully strong enough. We experience ourselves as being turned inside out, the way transformed consciousness happens, I reckon. ~jpc

We pray for deep global and planetary sustenance. Namaste.

What a Requiem Scenario Offers

It took [a] shock for [that person’s] life to be transformed. Maybe that’s what needs to happen for all of us, for everyone who lives on Earth. That could be what a requiem scenario offers us. ~Peter Senge, Presence, part I, “The Requiem Scenario,” p. 26

What might a requiem scenario look like and how might it present itself so we humans on planet Earth respond creatively? ~jpc

O to be sensitive and responsive. Namaste.

Maasai Creed

. . . We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from the grave. . . . ~from Jaroslav Pelikan, Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages (2005), p. 215

Creeds also can be transformed. Namaste.

image: www.gonomad.com/.../maasai_women_in_kenya.html

Collective Action

No one can deny that a network (a world network) of economic and psychic [pertaining to soul] affiliations is being woven at ever increasing speed which envelops and constantly penetrates more deeply within each of us. With every day that passes it becomes a little more impossible for us to act or think otherwise than collectively. ~Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man [sic], p. 177 http://www.supremelaw.org/authors/teilhard/noospher.htm

Teilhard had amazing vision. He saw the past and the future in such depth that they transformed the present. ~jpc

How do we learn to see like that? Namaste.

image: people.bu.edu/.../theology/theology_cg.htm

Sunday Dialogue (XXIV)

Journer: Where do we go when we die?

Nez: Where do you want to go?

Journer: To be with those I love and what I love.

Nez: Eternal life is past, present, and future, including the 15.8-billion-year-old universe* with billions to come. So there you go.

______
Note: tabulation of newest Hubble data

image: http://zhan.forever.kz/

The Meeting

[Quoting Buber:] “The Thou meets me through grace – it is not found by seeking. . . . The Thou meets me. But I step into direct relation to it. Hence the relationship means being chosen and choosing. . . .” Meeting with such a Thou , the I is changed . . . [the] I which must acknowledge what it is and so accept itself. Such meetings . . . are [revelatory] events. . . . ~H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation, p. 107

We do not presume upon the thou, though it is always present; and when we fumblingly step into direct relation to it, we fulfill our reason for being. ~jpc

Sometimes at “the meeting” acceptance happens and we are changed, in a small way or a life-changing way. Namaste.

Note: We stand present to David Reese's memorial service today.

image: photo from Judi White's lawn . . . a heron on the walk to the boathouse

A Way of Life

The worship of God is not a rule of safety – it is an adventure of the spirit. . . . ~Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 276

So worship is a way of life more than an hour we sit. ~jpc

We pray for the wings of worship. Namaste.

image: www.adventurewomen.com

Good Question

Interview with Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind climber to scale Mt. Everest. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/82/qa.html

Interviewer: So anything is possible?
Weihenmayer: No – there are limits. I mean, I can’t drive a car. But there are good questions and bad questions in life. . . . What if I were smarter? . . . What if I could see? Those are dead-end questions. A good question is, How do I do as much as I can with what I have?

We heard Erik the other night at Guilford College and our hearts soared like eagles. ~jpc

O to ask good questions. Namaste.

Prayer, Jesus Style

Prayer for Jesus Christ formed the brackets in which He accomplished His earthly work. It fortified Him with wisdom and power before action occurred, and it renewed, refreshed, and revived Him when His human strength was exhausted. ~Dan Hayes, Atlanta Community Ministries

Sounds worth doing. If it was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me. ~jpc

We would stay in touch with spirit, also. Namaste.

image: wysiwis.deviantart.com

Prayer as Luring

I believe that our heart’s deepest desires are our prayers. . . . There is a place for trying to bring ourselves into harmony with what the divine spirit of the universe wants, and trying to unite our energy with the divine energies – so we can do our part to lure things in this direction. ~David Ray Griffin: Alan AtKisson interview, “Redefining the Divine,” In Context quarterly, late Winter 1990

What does “the divine spirit of the universe want” from us? ~jpc

Luring. Namaste.

image: http://www.muskyhuntercatalog.com/acatalog/Rodd_Umlauf.html

Prayer Is an Act of Creation

Prayer is literally creating out of nothing. . . . [T]o bring to be what never was is prayer, nothing else. . . . Prayer is creativity. To turn this around, creativity is prayer. ~Joseph Mathews, “Prayer,” Bending History, p. 134

On this day in 1977, Joseph Wesley Mathews died. He changed history by changing the history of most he bumped into. He was a man of prayer. ~jpc

We remember those who prayed and something happened. Namaste.

Sunday Dialogue (XXIII)

Journer: What is the essence of prayer?

Nez: Change.

Journer: What do you mean?

Nez: The world changes as a result of prayer, beginning with you. As a student* said, “To pray is to change.”

______
* Richard Foster

image: photographer Chris de Bode, VSO project in Chimbiri, Ethiopia.

Small IS Beautiful

“Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. . . . [Muhammad] Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development,” the Nobel [Peace Prize] Committee said. . . . [Since 1983] the bank claims to have [lent $5.72 billion to] 6.6 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women, and provides services in more than 70,000 villages in Bangladesh. ~The Associated Press, 10/13/06

One small step for woman, one giant step for humankind. ~jpc

The poor we do not have to have with us always. Namaste.

Note: read about the event that started it all http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-10-13-norway-nobel_x.htm

Home

One may be a sensitive and seasoned traveler, at ease in many places, but one must have a home. Still, . . . there is no Absolute Home. . . . ~Herbert Fingarette, The Self in Transformation

Which comes first, the experience of “no place is home” or “every place is home”? ~jpc

“God bless our planet Earth / Our home sweet home.” Namaste.

image: tirannon.tky.hut.fi/pics/misc/

What Kind of People Are These?

No, it was not the murders, not the violence, that shocked us; it was the forgiveness that followed it for which we were not prepared. It was the lack of recrimination, the dearth of vindictiveness that left us amazed. Baffled. Confounded. It was the Christianity we all profess but which they [the Amish] practiced that left us stunned. ~Joan Chittister, “What Kind of People Are These?” via Michael Dowd http://nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/archives

We would learn to forgive. Namaste.

What Is Christianity?

[A]fter stripping away [that which hides] the essence of Christianity, he [Adolf Harnark in What Is Christianity?] . . . concluded, “The Christian religion is something simple and sublime; it means one thing and one thing only, eternal life in the midst of time. . . .” ~Lloyd Geering, Christianity Without God, p. 22, via David Reese, who gave me the book two years ago at Gatlinburg, Tennessee

This is why this-life resurrection is the center of Christianity: eternal life forever, always now. ~jpc

The concept of “eternal death” will hardly catalyze a religion. Namaste.

Note: We celebrate the completed life – in this form – of David Reese, whose understanding of the Word released him to care for creation. For all the saints. . . .

Authentic Spirituality

An authentic eco-spirituality must be placed squarely in the framework of both sustainability of the planet and social justice for all the human family. Both Earth and people must be present within our spiritual purview. In fact, we simply can’t be spiritually alive and forgetful of the deep cleavages dividing the family of creation. ~Al Fritsch, SJ, “Towards an Authentic Eco-Spirituality” (wikipedia.org: under “Thomas Berry”)

How do we keep a conscious relationship to the whole as we care for the parts; or, is it, if we care for the whole, the parts are cared for; or, how can we care for both at the same time? Maybe by creating demonstrations in society that care for family (persons/ creatures/ local community) and the planet at the same time? ~jpc

Anyway, Nasmaste.

image: Earth from space, NASA

The Gift Has Strings Attached

Jewish wisdom holds that our children don’t belong to us. They are both a loan and a gift from God, and the gift has strings attached. Our job is to raise our children to leave us. The children’s job is to find their own path in life. ~Wendy Mogel, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children (article in nytimes.com, 10/1/06)

The Jewish teachings and the animal kingdom know how to raise and let go of the “children.” ~jpc

The paradoxes of love are awesome. Namaste.

Sunday Dialogue (XXII)

Journer: What is the essence of religion?

Nez: Love.

Journer: Is that all you have to say?

Nez: Except for what one* of my students says, “The mind can be a little bit flaky. Listen to your heart.”

______
* Rabbi Joseph Gelberman, via Gerri Davis

image: Clifford Harper, Resurgence, issue 213

Relationship to the Spirit

I now was able to see the centrality of God (or “the Spirit,” to say the same thing) in Jesus’ own life. I began to see Jesus as one whose spirituality – his experiential awareness of Spirit – was foundational for his life. . . . Jesus’ relationship to the Spirit was the source of everything that he was. ~Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, p. 15 (his parentheses)

Since we are as close to spirit as Jesus was, it is and can be the source of everything we are, also. ~jpc

We give thanks for all wise ones who have brought us to see that relationship to spirit is our primal motivation. Namaste.

image: www.gwfa.de/fractal/genesis/index.html

The Present

Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is a mystery.
And Today?
Today is a gift.
That’s why we call it
The Present.

~Babatunde Olatunji

This understanding of evolution is key to the future. ~jpc

To live in the present, honoring the past, on behalf of the future. Namaste.

image: Matthew Graham www.mjg.smugmug.com

Response Par Excellence

Without any government help, they’ve [Riders for Health, started by Barry and Andrea Coleman] sent hundreds of motor bikes to Africa’s wildest places with money they’ve raised at bike rallies in England. They have also trained the local health workers how to drive and maintain them. [Riders for Health enabled African health workers to reach 9.79 million people in 2002-2003 http://www.riders.org/en/html/home.php.] ~Christiane Amanpour, “Africa’s HIV-infected Children Also Ignored,” cnn.com, 7/19/06

It is possible to care for all. ~jpc

O to deal with fundamental contradictions. Namaste.

Great Poetry

At the Galax Book Festival we chatted with Robert Morgan, poet and fiction writer (Gap Creek). He said a great poem is memorable (his key point), celebratory, with a surprise (maybe what friend Cynthia called an aha experience). My sister said a great poem speaks to the heart. I added that it unveils mysterious reality and makes us aware of the profound journey we’re on.

By these standards, not all poetry is great. Morgan said few poems of the last twenty to thirty years are. What description of great poetry would you add? Name a great poem. ~jpc

O to be inspired by great poetry. Namaste.

image: jpc holding arrangement of Galax leaves at the Galax Book Festival

Complexity Abounds

Consumption of the 40 million Hispanics in the U.S. is the same as the gross national product of Mexico, and Mexico has 110 million people. Hispanics in the United States are expected to spend nearly $800 billion this year. . . . By next year, their economic power should top $863 billion – outpacing . . . [all] minority group[s] in the country. ~Deborah Yao, AP business writer, 9/21/06

Granted, most of the 40 million (maybe next in size to the European block) did not come in the front gate past the Statue of Liberty. Nevertheless, their staying or leaving dramatically impacts the US future, and not just economically. This present challenge reflects how rich and poor will interrelate in our planetary future. ~jpc

Oh for a more effective body politic to deal with such challenges. Namaste.

Reality?

Ed Zwick, director and co-writer of “The Last Samurai” movie of 2003, says, “It’s as important to celebrate what’s poetic and idealized as it is to understand the reality. . . . We’re inspired by the mythologizing of the samurai as heroes.” ~Stefan Lovgren, “‘The Last Samurai’: Movie Myth or History?” National Geographic News, 12/2/03

Abraham, Siddhartha, Jesus, Bonhoeffer, and Mother Teresa are part history and part myth to us. Which part would you leave out? I’d say the “poetic” is our way of trying to articulate “reality,” or reality is more than just “history.” ~jpc

We celebrate the life within life. Namaste.

image: http://www.ocean.udel.edu/blacksea/history/noah.html

Sunday Dialogue (XXI)

Journer: Where does the power for real life come from?

Nez: As an authentic samurai knows, “There is Life in every breath.”*

Journer: And how do I harness that life-giving power?

Nez: Really breathe every breath you are given.

______
* Katsumoto in “The Last Samurai”

Note: Read The Ronin: A Novel Based on a Zen Myth, by William Dale Jennings, to see how a boy is trained to be a samurai.