Spiritual awakening

I don't know the source of this - I found it on Facebook!

Christianity misrepresented

The passage below is a quotation from a blog written by Rev Sally Coleman

Only recently I heard someone say - "if we truly lived as Jesus wanted us to then we would be a strange buttoned up, straight laced group of people that would confuse and repel others....."

How could anyone who has read the Gospels believe that? When I hear things like this I want to weep with frustration and anguish and anger, yes anger that we have told ourselves such lies, that we have loaded one another with so many burdens of how to and what to that we stumble around under the weight of them, and in the midst of all this confusion and stumbling we wonder amongst ourselves why we are not attracting new members! Then we feel bad and so we plan and scheme and work and strive and frankly we wear ourselves out, we take on new initiatives and struggle to keep them afloat....

Good point Sally.

Intelligence and doubt

"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence." - Charles Bukowski

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Five Star review

Wholeness and the Fruits of the Spirit [Kindle Edition]

by Pastor John (Author)

May 24, 2012   Review By Karen  * * * * *

I have enjoyed this book. It is a look at the fruit of the Spirit that we all can use in our daily lives. 

 (Copied from Amazon)

Thank you Karen for your five star review of my book. I am pleased you found it helpful. 
God Bless 
Pastor John

All age worship

Yesterday I led worship in a church which is not my usual one. The tunes for some of the hymns were new to that congregation. There was concern from the person I spoke to when discussing the music as their pianist is over 90 years old and had arthritis in her fingers. I was therefore a little nervous when we started as to how it would go!
But I need not have worried. She was not perfect but she showed signs amidst the occasional shaky bits of the greatly talented musician that she had been. She didn't just thump out the tunes but added delicate twiddly bits to the notes and played with expression to match the emphasis of the verses.
It is good when people are able to use their talents at whatever age and are given an opportunity to be useful rather than being put away in storage because they have had too many birthdays. We saw this when we were at Oxford for the graduation ceremony last weekend where the dean of degrees for the day from our daughter's college was an emeritus fellow well into her seventies.
I hope that when I get into my advanced years there will still be useful things that I can do. I also hope that my wife or some close friend will tell me when I get to be past it and it is time to put my feet up.

A prayer by George MacLeod

Christ, you are within each one of us.

Nearer are you than breathing,

closer than hands and feet.

Ours are the eyes with which you, in the mystery, 

look out with compassion on the world.

Take us outside, O Christ, outside holiness,

out to where soldiers curse and nations clash

at the crossroads of the world.

We ask it for your name's sake.

Amen.

George MacLeod was the founder of the Iona Community. 

This prayer can be seen as a word to all the pilgrims who come to the ancient abbey on Iona. In this thin place many experience holiness. This prayer reminds us that God gives us holy experiences in special places to go with us back to the world charging and changing us as a result.

A George MacDonald quote

God at the door...

"Nor will God force any door to enter in. He may send a tempest about the house; the wind of his astonishment may burst doors and windows, yea, shake the house to its foundations; but not then, not so, will He enter. The door must be opened by a willing hand ere the foot of Love will cross the threshold. He watches to see the door move from within. Every tempest is but an assault in the siege of Love. The terror of God is but the other side of his love; it is his love outside, that would be inside-love that knows the house is no house, only a place, until it enter."

Blessing

May flowers always line your path and sunshine light your day.
May songbirds serenade you every step along the way.
May a rainbow run beside you in a sky that's always blue.
And may happiness fill your heart each day your whole life through.

- Irish blessing

Love your neighbour as you love yourself

All human beings like being treated well. So often in our modern world people treat others with discourtesy, disrespect and downright rudeness. Being treated well gives you a boost and makes you feel good.

Last week I made a long train trip and booked using a special internet offer code. As a result I got a first class ticket at a bargain price. In first class the service I received was superb. 
I had never before experienced first class! In your seat you had complimentary drinks offered and complimentary food served all day by the carriage steward. This is not the way to take a trip if you are on a diet! It makes you feel good to be pampered and treated well. The seats are wider than those in ordinary carriages and also recline. I have been on long train journeys which can be a nightmare where you spend the trip longing for the agony to be over.
The trade off we have to understand is that good service costs. If we feel virtuous about getting the best possible deal and paying the lowest possible price for everything then we cannot expect the overworked staff,  inevitably be on minimum wage, to offer the best customer service. Like all of life we get what we pay for. You cannot expect a stranger to pamper you for free!
I find it challenging to wonder if I always treat people I meet in the best way that I can? Especially when I am tired at the end of a long day I know that I am not as nice to others as I want them to be towards me. 

Explaining symbolism

Last weekend we went to our daughter's graduation. It was held in Christopher Wren's Sheldonian theatre in Oxford and lasted for nearly two hours. I only understood a few words and had to keep looking at the translation on the glossy brochure that we had been given. The whole ceremony was in Latin.

All the participants were wearing gowns and mortarboards and had strange names like bedel, proctor, dean and pro-vice-chancellor. The proctors after having announced in Latin the names of the students graduating in groups of ten would immediately walk up and down the hall before calling the students to come forward for the degrees to be conferred. (This walking up and down was symbolic and was supposed to allow the deans to stand and object if they didn't want any students to be awarded degrees!) The students also dressed up – the graduands came in wearing the gowns signifying their status. Daughter arrived in her short “commoner” gown (the lowest of the low) that she had to wear for exams and formal dinners during her time as a student. They then processed out and returned in the new gowns indicating the new status the degree had conferred on them. The students awarded an MA degree knelt in a row in front of the pro-vice chancellor and he tapped each of them in turn on the head with a bible while saying in Latin “in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit.” Though these students had been at the cutting edge of astrophysics and other sciences or working on modern literature they were re-enacting a ceremony in a form that would have been recognisable more than 500 years ago! I was relieved when the vice chancellor said the word “disolvo” to signify the end!

The university staff were used to the ceremonial. They knew the Latin script and when to bow and when to doff their mortarboards. They may well have become used to the strangeness of it all. But I wonder what the three hundred parents, partners and friends of the students made of the whole thing? If you had not read the guide brochure you might have thought you had landed on another planet or on the set of Hogworts for the filming of Harry Potter!

I sometimes wonder what a person who had never been to church in their life would make of some of the things we take for granted. We use words and do things in a symbolic way because we find they mean something to us. We must not expect that everyone will understand why we do all the things we do in the way that we do them. How much time should we spend explaining? Should we aim for a casual worship service with no symbolic acts or ceremonial aspects? More questions to live with.

An ignored old hymn

Many old hymns are still in regular use today. The one below by Isaac Watts, written in 1719, is a versification of psalm 41. It has for some reason been left out of most modern hymnals.  The understanding of the word "bowels" has changed dramatically in the last 300 years! Apparently bowels at the time of Watts referred to deep feelings.


Blest is the man whose bowels move
And melt with pity to the poor;
Whose soul, by sympathising love,
Feels what his fellow saints endure.

His heart contrives for their relief
More good than his own hands can do;
He, in the time of general grief,
Shall find the Lord has bowels, too.

His soul shall live secure on earth,
With secret blessings on his head,
When drought, and pestilence and dearth
Around him multiply their dead.

Or if he languish on his couch,
God will pronounce his sins forgiv’n;
Will save him with a healing touch,
Or take his willing soul to Heav’n.

This L.M. version of Ps. xlii., stanzas 1-3, which was published in his Psalms of David, &c, 1719, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, appears in some collections as "Blest is the man whose mercies move;" and in others, "Blest is the man whose heart doth move," the object being to get rid of the, to some, objectionable expression in the first line. These changes are adopted both in Great Britain and in America.
-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

A prayer from Sri Lanka

O God,

make me a human being who is

strong-minded

imaginative

level-headed

sympathetic

a human who knows his mind

and is not afraid to speak it.

Amen

New Zealand Lord's prayer

Father and mother of us all,

Loving God, in whom is heaven;

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!

The way of your justice be followed

by the peoples of the world!

Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!

Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth!

With the bread we need for today, feed us.

In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.

In the times of temptation and test strengthen us.

From trial too great to endure, spare us.

From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever.

Amen

From a New Zealand prayer book

Tools for love

When we want to fix a screw we should not use a hammer. When we change a light bulb we do not want a spanner. When I cut the grass on a lawn I do not want to use kitchen scissors! These are all tools and good, useful tools they are too, but they are only good when they do what they were designed to do. Try to use the wrong tool and it will take you twice as long and may even hinder your progress if it is any use at all.

I was reading of a development agency that collected money from Christians in wealthy countries and used it to but tools and seeds for villages in Africa. They used an African Church to be the means of getting the tools to the people who could make best use of them.  These tools were accompanied by instructions and training to empower the local people to be able to take control of their own local environment and make a difference in their community.

The tools were inexpensive but by putting the right tools in the hands of the right people huge changes could be achieved as people took responsibility for their own development and saw the potential of what they could now do.

As Christians in the rich world the tool we have to help our brothers and sisters in the poor world are the development agencies that can take the small sums of money which we give and work with local trusted partners to make our love come alive. Christan love in the abstract is a meaningless concept. It needs to be concrete and real to be worth anything and to change the world. Through these agencies we can put our love into action and we can make a real difference.

Wholeness in worship

I recently read a quote from the eighteenth-century revivalist, Jonathan Edwards, who said, 

‘Some bodily worship is necessary to give liberty to our own devotion; yea though in secret, so more when with others . . . ‘Tis necessary that there should be something bodily and visible in the worship of a congregation; otherwise, there can be no communion at all’.

I wonder what he meant by bodily and visible? How can we do that when all we seem to do on a Sunday is sit in rows and sing together and say a prayer together. Are we denying our bodies? I must work on this - how can we be more wholly ourselves when we worship God in the company of our fellow believers.

Grace of God

“Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.” - Karl Barth (May 10, 1886 - December 10, 1968)

 

"Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego." - Simone Weil

Affirmation

With the whole church

I affirm that I am made in God's image,

befriended by Christ, empowered by the Spirit.

With people everywhere

I affirm God's goodness at the heart of humanity,

planted more deeply than all that is wrong.

With all creation

I celebrate the miracle and wonder of life,

the unfolding purposes of God,

forever at work in ourselves and the world.

From a liturgy of the Iona community.

A Lord's Prayer for today

This lovely contemporary version of the Lord's Prayer comes from the Wild Goose resource group of the Iona Community



God in Heaven
your name is to be honoured .
May your new community of hope
be realised on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today the essentials of life.
Release us from our wrongdoing
as we release those who wrong us.
Do not test us beyond our enduring;
save us from all that is evil.
For you embrace justice, love and peace,
now until the end of time. Amen.

Insurrection: To believe is human, to doubt divine

"To believe is human, to doubt divine" is the subtitle of Peter Rollins' new book called Insurrection. In this book Peter Rollins argues that the Christian faith is not primarily concerned with questions regarding life after death but with the possibility of life before death.

I post two quotations from the book. It is high on my list of books that I want to read.

 

"The claim I believe in God is nothing but a lie if it is not manifest in our lives, because one only believes in God in so far as one loves. "


"In the crucifixion we lose the idea of God as the one who justifies our loving engagement with the world by approving of it, but in resurrection we continue to affirm God as we love the world regardless. This is the move that some of the Christain mystics spoke of, a move from the idolotry of doing good for some reason (to get to heaven, to please God, get approval from others), to the act of doing good for no external reward. The former can be described as works based, in that it involves some economic exchange. In the latter we lay down all desire for reward and in doing so experience how love is its own reward. In the very experience of being forsaken by God (crucifixion) we find God in the very affirmation of Life itself (resurrection).
In this new state, the world is affirmed in the deepest and most radical way, not because everything that happens in it is good (indeed, all too often the very opposite is true), but because, in love, we experience creation, in all its brokenness, as wonderful."

Compassion

"The principal of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions and it calls us always to treat all others as we would wish to be treated ourselves."

With these words, Karen Armstrong unveiled the Charter for Compassionon November 9th 2009.  This charter is for people of every faith and those with no faith from around the world. The charter contains the public confession that “we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion."

The Charter for Compassion was devised by Karen Armstrong who has written several books on religion and faith in the contemporary world. She was at one time a Roman Catholic nun before studying at Oxford University and ending up as a teacher. In recent years she has become widely known as a writer and speaker. Her study of the world’s religions revealed very clearly their differences but she identified a common thread that ran through them all. The common thread is compassion.

This dream is not simple or naieve but sums up the aspirations of all thinking and caring people irrespective of their faith. The Charter “impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures and to honor the inviolable sanctity of every single human being treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.”

By early 2012 more than 85,000 people had affirmed the charter online. It has been implemented in various settings. One of the most notable is in a jail in Washington State (USA) where the goal was to decrease violence by 2.5 percent. The project was much more successful than hoped and violence decreased by 100 percent. The creators are evaluating the advantages for the federal government of implementing this program across the country.