To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
To the flight attendant that never came home
To the beautiful smile lost to Auschwitz
To the young life cut short by a drunk driver
To the loving mother shot by a random bullet
To the strong father lynched for social order
To the brother with life bubbling over, dead at 20
And the sister like none other, beaten by her lover
To all that see and do not understand, to all who feel it deeply in comfortless pain, and know the thin line of life making sadness, to the one who has given up, agreed with hopelessness and found their hearts slipping into madness - To all overwhelmed by a world in meaningless pain. To you I write this...... this is my journey
I do not know you but I know your experience it cuts at My heart too and I do believe it is an experience all who live have lived. I too find no solace in the pat answers. Those churchy knee-jerk answers which come on the heals of some tragedy: "It was God's will", "God worked it for good", "four kids came to Christ because of this". At times I even find myself in my self-exalting autonomy getting mad as hell at the thought that God would kill people to manipulate others. While not turning a blind eye to the unrelenting fact that God's Lordship is never passive. And while up holding the truth that ..the possible.. passes before his throne and is made existence by his authoritative nod. I affirm that Gods means to His good are never that temporal and humanly as to make him a Tyrant.
What then are we to do? We are to love that God..s passion is for his glory but we must remember His ways are never so mysterious than in the moments glory and pain intertwine. We must not let the problem of pain fill our minds with the fruitless searching for why? Job in his seeking asked why and was greeted with two who..s. God said, Job, who are you? And who am I? In the end, God is God and I am not. It is Job that repents confessing, He now sees in a new way.
But what of this deep meaningless pain at the bottom of human existence? What of the senseless, pointless, pain in all of life? We need not turn our fist at God in defiant accusation but look inward in humble refection.
Reader, I believe that the nagging in your chest, that milky sickness you feel in your stomach at the first sight of tragedy is a God-given sense of injustice. A knowing that the reality that is, ought not be! To put it another way, we live in the in between: Between the age that was and the age that will be. It is a world that is both sometimes good and sometimes shitty. We live in the days after the garden, but also after the resurrection both like springs filling our wells with equal douses of hope and despair. At best we can say, we live in the twilight hour and it often feels like night is coming strong. Personally, in similar moments, I have responded with anger, unending tears, and even worse unaffected detachment, so self-absorbed that all I could respond with was, Glad that is not me! Through it all I came to see life differently, my vision expanded and I saw things newly framed. It is true that adversity even observed introduces a man to himself. You see, I believe that Humanity is not the innocent or the victim and thus undeserving of a right to be worthy of anything. We are a people in-between good and evil thus fallen. So How do I justify times of meaninglessness? Well, I don..t. It is meaningless too try. But I have the courage to see meaningless and hopeless feelings as felt injustice. A sense that bounces my eyes to see what ought not be will one day be no more. A sense that moves my feet and reaches out my hands to help, for the bush that Moses saw never stopped burning and God never stopped calling people to help those whose feet are burning in the sands of this world.
Embodyed Gospel
So what do I do? I act, I take action. Calvin wrote, "The gospel is not a doctrain of the tounge, but of life." Embodying the gospel is the call of every christain to action because the gospel is not just a life giving story, but a story we live in as our new life. But we must heed the advice of John murray, who reminds us that, "Activity which lacks thought is blind." Our action take the shape our thoughts give them. So as we deeply feel this call to act we must deeply reflect the best God-honnoring action. My first action each time is to exist with others, to be human with there humanity. I have learned when I see pain, I let myself hurt with those that hurt. 0ther times I enter the joy of those rejoicing. Turning event into worship and life into an alter.
Live with redeeming vision
I thoughtfully redeem the moment as best I can - I have courage to see the day when all will be right with the world. The courage to see the One that will reinvent this world has shown himself as faithful love, unfailing grace. So I can hope. I often remind myself that though it feels like twilight, though I live in this twilight hour, the sun is not setting. It is on the rise!
In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world. -- Jesus Christ
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.
- Rev 21:1-5
Monday, December 25, 2006
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Ethereal reality and real spirituality.
I like the word Ethereal – it means “of or relating to the regions beyond the earth” So says Webster. As a noun it deals with those things existing only in the ether” It is used in poetry to describe something as distinct. It is the subject matter of the spiritual. In Chinese philosophy, the ch’i (pronounced che) is the ethereal substance of which everything is composed. This word in Chinese means breath or force. Not to be confused with halitosis which is a breath “with” force. The Early Taoist philosopher’s sought to find the ch’i in you and me. They determined [how I do not know] that the ch’i is in man’s breath and his fluids and sought to develop techniques to increases physical longevity and spiritual power. And latter was born Tie-ch’i movement to produce longevity and power and even later Run D MC perfecting the “hustle and flow” as a more verbal expiration of pimping the ch’i. Seriously, this became the foundational perception of reality for the east. All is one as grounded in the ch’i. Lately there has been a retune to this oneness in some existencal philosophies, most notably, the view held by the “existencal detective” played by Dustan Hoffmann in “I “heart” hukabee”. All is one but now it is on a physical and very quantum level. The logic is as follows, we are all made of atoms so one a basic level we are all one and destined to die and return to one. Think of this unity like a blanket. We are one with the blanket, our ego self deceives us and is itself and illusion. This ego-self-delusion tells us that we are separate and thus have identity. We should think of ourselves as part of the blanket. Be the blanket, as Hoffmann’s character encouragers. What is often not said, and often left hanging is the in death consciences stops and thus existence, thus reality, thus we are no more, thus we are fertilizer for the next stage of life. That give me such hope, I can almost hear elton John singing circle of life.. So there you have it the "telos" of this view. a Purposed movement in life… becoming FERTERLIZER…
As a side note there is a push to use the findings in the very “theoretic” science of quantum physics to ground an ethic, for example a book called the "Tao of physics." In all this a few things are clear.
1. Ch’I or the blanket or any form of oneness is a negation of responsibility to a greater authority. How is that? No real self no accountability, No real distention no grounds for making judgments. All choices have no value other than emotional and they even lack a aspect of the personal for that implies self.
2. It is self-contradictory. We are all made up of the same stuff thus all is one. So we will try to control the stuff to gain longevity and spiritual power and be an self over the ch'i though we do not have a self, or so it goes! OK... Am I taking crazy pills here or is that just a spiritual way to control your life and get your way.
3. in the final analysis the universe is void of meaninglessness and particularly lose of identity – this is why Ancestor worship rises from the philosophy of Tao. If Transcendent identity is non existent then duty and respect and honor is given to the next class down. The social – the "I" is absorbed into the collective. History shows that this lack of balance leads to oppression of minority and marginal groups. It becomes a monster not a heaven.
4. In the end eastern views of reality and western atheistic existencal though are just different types of the same animal. A love of self over God, the inclination of preferring the taste of your preference to the joy of God. C.S. Lewis nails what we are like in this disposition. “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” so we play in the mud.
Lets get Ethereal
Back to Ethereal – as I have said, by definition, ethereal is the subject mater of spirituality. For the Christian our subject is not ch’i but God. The eternal subject, benevolent and loving towards his creation. In him is the ground of all that is. Things are beautify for he is beauty. Things have truth for he is truth. His creation is good because he is good. He sees it is good for his hands only moves in patterns of goodness. Good GOD that is a beauty truth. This truth we share with the Jew but the Christian goes further in pointing to the God-with-us event Christ. In history this temporal and dusty reality, he came as God incognito, the God/man. He came as a marker of what it means to be human and a picture of God’s redeeming love.
The wow in God and his unthinkable means
Transcendent is beyond categories, words, and imaginations. Human language and concepts fail so quickly but glimpse of this greatness is seen in such concepts as beauty truth and goodness only capture part of our Father but in Christ truth beauty and goodness wear the clothing of humanity. Ethics take shape; life takes shape, Christ give shape to my existence. He stands as measure of my lack. My incomplete and wayward heart and then gives grace through means I would deem unthinkable. A noble death for crimes committed is a death of the one convicted but to see beauty hanged, truth killed, and goodness lay limp in the grave make me shake with disbelief. Reality is quickly undone like a child’s first knot. This is not my way but yet the only way. The way in him makes distains collapse in on itself so that earth and heaven meet, heart hear and God is known as Father. What a crashing in is the cross. What a folding of distance is redemption. What a humbling hope. To cite Calvin, ‘All pride is beaten down; man cannot boast of anything save the free grace of God.’ SO I do in a since get out of self, the self-deceptions of my own preferences formed by my sinful nature. Out of my ego that desires and demands to pride-fully live as king of a kingdom no bigger than the span between one’s eyes, and claming it to be the whole world. An ego who’s mantra is “I have rights!” and value is only found in comparison to other egos with more stuff or a better boob job. An ego that destroys what it loves, striping me of my humanity in the quest to be an individual. So in Christ I am coming back to the place where I am human again. This is my “telos”, my purposed movement in life.. Authentic existence back to being me for now to eternity. A creature than in a special way can glory in God and gain the greatest happiness in that existence.
A coming Back to createdness
It is a coming back. To praise like Paul I see God as worthy for “to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen”. A special glory I give and will never taste! A glory Jesus shares with him, a glory only they can know for from him and in him and with him and thought him and by him and to him and for him all things existed. This is what it is to be God a joy he alone knows but A Joy I alone can glory in and give to him. What wonderful knowledge – it is too much to know as words it is as a fire – to think God glories in my joy of his joy and he glories in his joy of my joy. That is a lot of joy, almost like a joy fight.
When Love mess you UP its Good.
As Alban Goodier wrote, “perfect love, as we know, has three functions; it longs to possess its beloved, it longs to give to its beloved, it longs for its beloved to return this love.” Such a perfict love is beyond man, In my skin with it’s ego this is imposable but In Christ by faith all things are possible. By faith, I am in that love which the Father shares for the son and the son for the Father. God’s perfect love that glories in each other. Joy unknown to us but we glory in what we see. That kind of love is beauty, truth and Goodness. We can not react with Flames of love, right and stout, Tears rich with the hope of eternity and the shimmering brilliance of devotion! This is life in him, caught in this crossfire of love and the object of that love simultaneously. So by faith, I can live the God above self life. I can only do this when my faith looks at spiritual truth and is made to pleasure in them by the spirit.
It is a new seeing
After faith, life is different, for faith is like the changing of the guard. I battle not to control the ch’i. I leave all my blankest on the bed. I am home in him. Faith is an organ of knowing and it operation opens life to a new way of seeing. I see myself-Anew. I have an identity ground in something bigger than biology, or my will to power me. It is a calling back to a place I once only heard whispers of in dreams undreamed. A new me that is me but newly made from above. I am known for I am known as I am, both above me and eye to eye. I am saint and sinner, child and brother, Lover and loved. When I look out at the world I see the world anew.
People have an image faintly clear, an image of one who made them. They have worth, in there movements. Humanity’s expression of beauty truth and goodness when not twisted cry out for heaven to be known. Who can not hear a story of a hero’s sacrifice and not say “truly beautify” or read ‘pros of EE Cummings come alive, and a good joke is a moment of IN-JOY-Meant. Suffering was elegant like a cool dark night just before dawn. It could be endured for life’s why questions had been given a B-12 shot of For GOD’s Glory! In all the aspects of the human experience – man is seen again as God’s special hand made self-portrait. By faith, they have value for he made and is willing to redeem, so we can Hope in gospel power, that with gospel words, they will be made worshipers too. An join in our joy for he died for all. Augustine writes:
'The Redeemer came and paid the price; He poured out His blood and with it bought the world. Do you ask me what He bought? See the price He gave and you will discover what He bought. The price is the blood of Christ Himself. What is adequate to a price like that? What, but the whole world? What, but all the nations of the world? Indeed they make little of the price that has been paid, or else they must be very proud, who say either that it is so little as only to have bought the men of Africa, or that they themselves are so important that such a price was paid for them alone. Let not such people think too much of themselves, let them beware of their pride. He Who gave so much gave it for all."
St. Augustine [ In Ps. 95. n. 8]
Also I see the world anew, The world shines with fingerprints creation ordered symphony to the one. It is like the first time you return the playground of your childhood. The place of so many joys so much pleasure. Everything is the same, but different not because it has changed but because you have. This is life with new eyes. This is life in him. As a child, Swinging brought you such joy. Now the renewed acquaintance with swinging brings with it a delight and deeper still the joy goes. Now it is as if the joy wills eternity. Every sway taking you deeper to the day when your feet will leave this earth and the object of your love beckons you up, up , up into his arms.
how we regain this sight?
Remember the old Illustration of the train. Faith is the engine. Facts are the fuel and emotion is the cabooses. If I may be blunt but that is a destructive way to view the three base categories of understanding existence. The biblical mode is Faith as the engine facts as the fuel and emotions as the fire. If we use the first illustration we divide facts and values and clam that emotions are non-consequencal,clamming they are the whipped toping of life(the good ones that is – negative emotion are taken very seriously and some them to a fault also) this also implies that feelings are dead weight. Man is an integrated self. Jesus told us to love God with all our heart mind soul and spirit - integration is the key to the second illustration. Look at how they are connected.
Feelings as the fire = will not exist without fuel as facts, are not sustained without a growing knowing of facts. Feelings see the beauty in the facts they burn over them! So how we see the facts is important. For faith to Operate in us as an organ of knowing, we must burn for truth, see the beauty in truth, and savor the goodness of truth this is the role of feelings in faith. The great things is God also helps un in this task. The longer we savor and sit on a truth letting the spirit illuminate our heart to value this truth and bends our perception of reality around it. Kierkegaard called this being captured by the truth, where you do not have it it has you. Many in the world live more captured than most Christians do. I have seen scientist on PBS BURN brighter for there facts than the preachers on Sunday do! THAT my friend is a shame!
Facts are the spiritual information. Facts are fuel. The content of our theology. God has made reality in such a way that the closer to God through his self revilation the more single our focus becomes. In other words, Good theology will cause us to burn for him. Also to note that it is the fuel that dictates the nature of the fire. if you burn gas the flam is blue, wood it is red. The nature of the fire is consistent to the fuel it uses.
Faith is dead without felling and flakey without facts. fuel and fire fill our faith but our faith choices to feel and feed on facts. Faith choice what to savor in the act of study and faith calls forth feeling in the act of serving. Faith find it fulfillment in a firry fact filled existence that apprehends God as beauty truth and goodness. A heart and mind enlivened by a vision of God.
If I were to give stages to this way of worship
1. Learning the facts by faith and prayer for feeling (rom 5:4)
2. Owning the facts
3. Savoring the facts by feeling there power and faithful repetition
4. Having the facts own you by feeling and faith filled imagination.
The X factor - God's spirit working in you to make fast real, feeling powerful and faith living.
I thirst a lover’s thirst and I have a sinner’s heart. But this I know the blanket will burn, the ch’i is a trick but God is my all and all, the one that makes me sick with love. Love rest and love draws me on – love calms me and love pushes me out. love births hopes and courage fills the soul. As Augustine, a man of mindly-heartburning-wholeness once wrote:
He grasps both what is patent and what is latent in religious matters, who keeps charity in his heart. Love leads him to inquire, love guides him in his search, love bids him knock at the door; when at last he has found what he has sought, love enables him to keep it
St. Augustine (Serm. 189, de Temp.)
This is why I study like one possessed... for at time I am.. capture by the spirit of love
a love that moves me to study
A love that clears my discernment
A love that keeps me thinking
A love that affect my memory by intensity, enjoyment, and honor for the truth
I warn you Love will strike you - Mk 8:34
I am one chosen! why? I do not know, I love and loth the reality I know. I know he loveds with a strong love. I am chosen to be violently arrested by love, savagely ravaged by sweet mercy. And when I pick up my ch’i and put down the cross he is not slow in His activity. If we are sensitive, he will know his expediency of movement and wither by fire, heaven or prophets we will know he stand to give us grace so we do not go our own destructive way. He calls me back, to look on the beauty, truth and goodness of creation and the cross and say with all certainty. “Mercy and truth hath met each other; justice and peace have kissed. Truth is sprung out of the earth; and justice hath looked down from heaven" (Ps. 85:10-11). FOR WE AM REDEEMED!
God loved me before I was, Therefore He made me.
God loved me after I was made, Therefore He became man for me.
God loved me after He had become man for me, Therefore He died for me.
God loved me after He had died for me, Therefore He rose again for me.
God loved me after He had risen for me, Therefore He ascended into heaven for me.
God loved me after His ascension, Therefore He came back to me.
God loved me after He had come back to me, Therefore He entered into me.
God loved me after He had entered into me, Therefore He made me one with Himself
A member of His own body "Which is the Church."
This and more is my God to me, even here and now in this life;
“Alban Goodier”acquaintance
As a side note there is a push to use the findings in the very “theoretic” science of quantum physics to ground an ethic, for example a book called the "Tao of physics." In all this a few things are clear.
1. Ch’I or the blanket or any form of oneness is a negation of responsibility to a greater authority. How is that? No real self no accountability, No real distention no grounds for making judgments. All choices have no value other than emotional and they even lack a aspect of the personal for that implies self.
2. It is self-contradictory. We are all made up of the same stuff thus all is one. So we will try to control the stuff to gain longevity and spiritual power and be an self over the ch'i though we do not have a self, or so it goes! OK... Am I taking crazy pills here or is that just a spiritual way to control your life and get your way.
3. in the final analysis the universe is void of meaninglessness and particularly lose of identity – this is why Ancestor worship rises from the philosophy of Tao. If Transcendent identity is non existent then duty and respect and honor is given to the next class down. The social – the "I" is absorbed into the collective. History shows that this lack of balance leads to oppression of minority and marginal groups. It becomes a monster not a heaven.
4. In the end eastern views of reality and western atheistic existencal though are just different types of the same animal. A love of self over God, the inclination of preferring the taste of your preference to the joy of God. C.S. Lewis nails what we are like in this disposition. “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” so we play in the mud.
Lets get Ethereal
Back to Ethereal – as I have said, by definition, ethereal is the subject mater of spirituality. For the Christian our subject is not ch’i but God. The eternal subject, benevolent and loving towards his creation. In him is the ground of all that is. Things are beautify for he is beauty. Things have truth for he is truth. His creation is good because he is good. He sees it is good for his hands only moves in patterns of goodness. Good GOD that is a beauty truth. This truth we share with the Jew but the Christian goes further in pointing to the God-with-us event Christ. In history this temporal and dusty reality, he came as God incognito, the God/man. He came as a marker of what it means to be human and a picture of God’s redeeming love.
The wow in God and his unthinkable means
Transcendent is beyond categories, words, and imaginations. Human language and concepts fail so quickly but glimpse of this greatness is seen in such concepts as beauty truth and goodness only capture part of our Father but in Christ truth beauty and goodness wear the clothing of humanity. Ethics take shape; life takes shape, Christ give shape to my existence. He stands as measure of my lack. My incomplete and wayward heart and then gives grace through means I would deem unthinkable. A noble death for crimes committed is a death of the one convicted but to see beauty hanged, truth killed, and goodness lay limp in the grave make me shake with disbelief. Reality is quickly undone like a child’s first knot. This is not my way but yet the only way. The way in him makes distains collapse in on itself so that earth and heaven meet, heart hear and God is known as Father. What a crashing in is the cross. What a folding of distance is redemption. What a humbling hope. To cite Calvin, ‘All pride is beaten down; man cannot boast of anything save the free grace of God.’ SO I do in a since get out of self, the self-deceptions of my own preferences formed by my sinful nature. Out of my ego that desires and demands to pride-fully live as king of a kingdom no bigger than the span between one’s eyes, and claming it to be the whole world. An ego who’s mantra is “I have rights!” and value is only found in comparison to other egos with more stuff or a better boob job. An ego that destroys what it loves, striping me of my humanity in the quest to be an individual. So in Christ I am coming back to the place where I am human again. This is my “telos”, my purposed movement in life.. Authentic existence back to being me for now to eternity. A creature than in a special way can glory in God and gain the greatest happiness in that existence.
A coming Back to createdness
It is a coming back. To praise like Paul I see God as worthy for “to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen”. A special glory I give and will never taste! A glory Jesus shares with him, a glory only they can know for from him and in him and with him and thought him and by him and to him and for him all things existed. This is what it is to be God a joy he alone knows but A Joy I alone can glory in and give to him. What wonderful knowledge – it is too much to know as words it is as a fire – to think God glories in my joy of his joy and he glories in his joy of my joy. That is a lot of joy, almost like a joy fight.
When Love mess you UP its Good.
As Alban Goodier wrote, “perfect love, as we know, has three functions; it longs to possess its beloved, it longs to give to its beloved, it longs for its beloved to return this love.” Such a perfict love is beyond man, In my skin with it’s ego this is imposable but In Christ by faith all things are possible. By faith, I am in that love which the Father shares for the son and the son for the Father. God’s perfect love that glories in each other. Joy unknown to us but we glory in what we see. That kind of love is beauty, truth and Goodness. We can not react with Flames of love, right and stout, Tears rich with the hope of eternity and the shimmering brilliance of devotion! This is life in him, caught in this crossfire of love and the object of that love simultaneously. So by faith, I can live the God above self life. I can only do this when my faith looks at spiritual truth and is made to pleasure in them by the spirit.
It is a new seeing
After faith, life is different, for faith is like the changing of the guard. I battle not to control the ch’i. I leave all my blankest on the bed. I am home in him. Faith is an organ of knowing and it operation opens life to a new way of seeing. I see myself-Anew. I have an identity ground in something bigger than biology, or my will to power me. It is a calling back to a place I once only heard whispers of in dreams undreamed. A new me that is me but newly made from above. I am known for I am known as I am, both above me and eye to eye. I am saint and sinner, child and brother, Lover and loved. When I look out at the world I see the world anew.
People have an image faintly clear, an image of one who made them. They have worth, in there movements. Humanity’s expression of beauty truth and goodness when not twisted cry out for heaven to be known. Who can not hear a story of a hero’s sacrifice and not say “truly beautify” or read ‘pros of EE Cummings come alive, and a good joke is a moment of IN-JOY-Meant. Suffering was elegant like a cool dark night just before dawn. It could be endured for life’s why questions had been given a B-12 shot of For GOD’s Glory! In all the aspects of the human experience – man is seen again as God’s special hand made self-portrait. By faith, they have value for he made and is willing to redeem, so we can Hope in gospel power, that with gospel words, they will be made worshipers too. An join in our joy for he died for all. Augustine writes:
'The Redeemer came and paid the price; He poured out His blood and with it bought the world. Do you ask me what He bought? See the price He gave and you will discover what He bought. The price is the blood of Christ Himself. What is adequate to a price like that? What, but the whole world? What, but all the nations of the world? Indeed they make little of the price that has been paid, or else they must be very proud, who say either that it is so little as only to have bought the men of Africa, or that they themselves are so important that such a price was paid for them alone. Let not such people think too much of themselves, let them beware of their pride. He Who gave so much gave it for all."
St. Augustine [ In Ps. 95. n. 8]
Also I see the world anew, The world shines with fingerprints creation ordered symphony to the one. It is like the first time you return the playground of your childhood. The place of so many joys so much pleasure. Everything is the same, but different not because it has changed but because you have. This is life with new eyes. This is life in him. As a child, Swinging brought you such joy. Now the renewed acquaintance with swinging brings with it a delight and deeper still the joy goes. Now it is as if the joy wills eternity. Every sway taking you deeper to the day when your feet will leave this earth and the object of your love beckons you up, up , up into his arms.
how we regain this sight?
Remember the old Illustration of the train. Faith is the engine. Facts are the fuel and emotion is the cabooses. If I may be blunt but that is a destructive way to view the three base categories of understanding existence. The biblical mode is Faith as the engine facts as the fuel and emotions as the fire. If we use the first illustration we divide facts and values and clam that emotions are non-consequencal,clamming they are the whipped toping of life(the good ones that is – negative emotion are taken very seriously and some them to a fault also) this also implies that feelings are dead weight. Man is an integrated self. Jesus told us to love God with all our heart mind soul and spirit - integration is the key to the second illustration. Look at how they are connected.
Feelings as the fire = will not exist without fuel as facts, are not sustained without a growing knowing of facts. Feelings see the beauty in the facts they burn over them! So how we see the facts is important. For faith to Operate in us as an organ of knowing, we must burn for truth, see the beauty in truth, and savor the goodness of truth this is the role of feelings in faith. The great things is God also helps un in this task. The longer we savor and sit on a truth letting the spirit illuminate our heart to value this truth and bends our perception of reality around it. Kierkegaard called this being captured by the truth, where you do not have it it has you. Many in the world live more captured than most Christians do. I have seen scientist on PBS BURN brighter for there facts than the preachers on Sunday do! THAT my friend is a shame!
Facts are the spiritual information. Facts are fuel. The content of our theology. God has made reality in such a way that the closer to God through his self revilation the more single our focus becomes. In other words, Good theology will cause us to burn for him. Also to note that it is the fuel that dictates the nature of the fire. if you burn gas the flam is blue, wood it is red. The nature of the fire is consistent to the fuel it uses.
Faith is dead without felling and flakey without facts. fuel and fire fill our faith but our faith choices to feel and feed on facts. Faith choice what to savor in the act of study and faith calls forth feeling in the act of serving. Faith find it fulfillment in a firry fact filled existence that apprehends God as beauty truth and goodness. A heart and mind enlivened by a vision of God.
If I were to give stages to this way of worship
1. Learning the facts by faith and prayer for feeling (rom 5:4)
2. Owning the facts
3. Savoring the facts by feeling there power and faithful repetition
4. Having the facts own you by feeling and faith filled imagination.
The X factor - God's spirit working in you to make fast real, feeling powerful and faith living.
I thirst a lover’s thirst and I have a sinner’s heart. But this I know the blanket will burn, the ch’i is a trick but God is my all and all, the one that makes me sick with love. Love rest and love draws me on – love calms me and love pushes me out. love births hopes and courage fills the soul. As Augustine, a man of mindly-heartburning-wholeness once wrote:
He grasps both what is patent and what is latent in religious matters, who keeps charity in his heart. Love leads him to inquire, love guides him in his search, love bids him knock at the door; when at last he has found what he has sought, love enables him to keep it
St. Augustine (Serm. 189, de Temp.)
This is why I study like one possessed... for at time I am.. capture by the spirit of love
a love that moves me to study
A love that clears my discernment
A love that keeps me thinking
A love that affect my memory by intensity, enjoyment, and honor for the truth
I warn you Love will strike you - Mk 8:34
I am one chosen! why? I do not know, I love and loth the reality I know. I know he loveds with a strong love. I am chosen to be violently arrested by love, savagely ravaged by sweet mercy. And when I pick up my ch’i and put down the cross he is not slow in His activity. If we are sensitive, he will know his expediency of movement and wither by fire, heaven or prophets we will know he stand to give us grace so we do not go our own destructive way. He calls me back, to look on the beauty, truth and goodness of creation and the cross and say with all certainty. “Mercy and truth hath met each other; justice and peace have kissed. Truth is sprung out of the earth; and justice hath looked down from heaven" (Ps. 85:10-11). FOR WE AM REDEEMED!
God loved me before I was, Therefore He made me.
God loved me after I was made, Therefore He became man for me.
God loved me after He had become man for me, Therefore He died for me.
God loved me after He had died for me, Therefore He rose again for me.
God loved me after He had risen for me, Therefore He ascended into heaven for me.
God loved me after His ascension, Therefore He came back to me.
God loved me after He had come back to me, Therefore He entered into me.
God loved me after He had entered into me, Therefore He made me one with Himself
A member of His own body "Which is the Church."
This and more is my God to me, even here and now in this life;
“Alban Goodier”acquaintance
Sunday, December 03, 2006
A " What IF " test --- for seeds of contemplation
What IF.....?
1. ....we always saw the implications of the “big picture” along with “my picture”?
2. ....we wanted to do what was true and not just convenient or self-serving to me?
3. ....we listened to the deepest values of all cultures and not just to our own?
4. ....we stopped, looked and listened to our hearts to examine its daily “movements”?
5. ....we could see the personal struggle in people’s hearts before we imposed any moral obligations?
6. ....we sought out the truth in the beauty and art of our own tradition, past and present?
7. ....we thanked God every day for our breath and blessings?
8. ....we described our humanity and personhood in biblically-based but understandable terms?
9. ....we realized that many things we thought were “wrong” or “taboo” really were not?
10....we thought it is “OK” to reinvestigate our methods, moods, and commitments to the faith?
11....we were biblically authentic, we “lived real and did life well” to such a degree people asked how beauty goodness and truth could be in their lives?
12....we truly believed that the gospel was the “good news”? A message that could have the potential of being as good to you as creation is to God.
13....we could find harmony in the in-between, living in God’s “already and not yet” kingdom?
14....we where known as people of the Spirit and the Word without confusing, diluting, elevating, dividing, and contrasting them?
15....our ethical lives were observably beautiful. A life free from legalism and lasciviousness, free for service and love, a life of poise, a kind of dance where control and abandon move in a beautifully complimentary display, a life that can only be described as graceful (grace filled)?
16....we saw the gospel as bigger than something we own the rights to but as a message that had ownership of us, how would that change our mission, our life?
17....we saw the gospel not as something we lived by but something we lived in, not as a story we just told but a story that told us, not as a point to life but as a point life is seen through…. how would our vision of life be reshaped?
Most, yet not all, the answers are in Matthew 5, 6, 7, and 26:31-46.
1. ....we always saw the implications of the “big picture” along with “my picture”?
2. ....we wanted to do what was true and not just convenient or self-serving to me?
3. ....we listened to the deepest values of all cultures and not just to our own?
4. ....we stopped, looked and listened to our hearts to examine its daily “movements”?
5. ....we could see the personal struggle in people’s hearts before we imposed any moral obligations?
6. ....we sought out the truth in the beauty and art of our own tradition, past and present?
7. ....we thanked God every day for our breath and blessings?
8. ....we described our humanity and personhood in biblically-based but understandable terms?
9. ....we realized that many things we thought were “wrong” or “taboo” really were not?
10....we thought it is “OK” to reinvestigate our methods, moods, and commitments to the faith?
11....we were biblically authentic, we “lived real and did life well” to such a degree people asked how beauty goodness and truth could be in their lives?
12....we truly believed that the gospel was the “good news”? A message that could have the potential of being as good to you as creation is to God.
13....we could find harmony in the in-between, living in God’s “already and not yet” kingdom?
14....we where known as people of the Spirit and the Word without confusing, diluting, elevating, dividing, and contrasting them?
15....our ethical lives were observably beautiful. A life free from legalism and lasciviousness, free for service and love, a life of poise, a kind of dance where control and abandon move in a beautifully complimentary display, a life that can only be described as graceful (grace filled)?
16....we saw the gospel as bigger than something we own the rights to but as a message that had ownership of us, how would that change our mission, our life?
17....we saw the gospel not as something we lived by but something we lived in, not as a story we just told but a story that told us, not as a point to life but as a point life is seen through…. how would our vision of life be reshaped?
Most, yet not all, the answers are in Matthew 5, 6, 7, and 26:31-46.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Rules of Engagment
1. No making fun of my spelling - I will find you and kill you -- with kindness.. But kindness does hurt if you swing it hard enough.
2. Trash talking is permitted but it must be made in the form of a question? Ex "I have a high BO level what is your excuses?"
3. Pop culture references must be made with in the years or 1976 to 1997...
4. Ok truth is the only rule is play nice....... “Dyslexics” like myself have been known to go postal!..
2. Trash talking is permitted but it must be made in the form of a question? Ex "I have a high BO level what is your excuses?"
3. Pop culture references must be made with in the years or 1976 to 1997...
4. Ok truth is the only rule is play nice....... “Dyslexics” like myself have been known to go postal!..
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