It's All About How You See

I think the contemplative mind is the most absolute assault on the secular or rational worldview, because it really is a different mind—a very different point of view—that pays attention to different things.

The mind that I call the “small self” or the “false self” reads everything in terms of personal advantage and short-term effort. “What’s in it for me?” “How will I look?” “How will I look good?” As long as you read reality from the reference point of the small self of “how I personally feel” or “what I need or want,” you cannot get very far. The lens never opens up.

Thus, the great religions have taught that we need to change the seer much more than just telling people what to see—that is contemplation. It does not tell people what to see as much as how to see.

Richerd Rohr

Greenbelt's 40th

Got back from the Greenbelt Festival on Tuesday night...heavy traffic on the M25 (what's new?)...the M20 flowed nicely so was on time for the ferry.
Rewind...
After 2 gorgeous days in Brighton with Jack my dear wife, we headed for Cheltenham - which took us 6 hours (damn British roads!) -
It's our 4th Greenbelt the trot  since the 80s...Greenbelt has become our oasis, a place where we are comforted, challenged and stretched. It's encouraging to be in the midst of thousands of people who have a similar ethos when in our daily lives it's not often the case.
Greenbelt nudges us back on track...with its eclectic array of arts, talks and conversation...

What did I personally get out of Greenbelt this year? That's a good question.
I can be a pretty cynical guy (yes really)...and one of the things that challenged me was the right to be skeptical but pay attention about getting cynical.
You see I'm really skeptical about our world systems, its politics, its capitalism that benefits the rich and keeps the poor impoverished...(I could go on)...and my skepticism can then boarder on down right cynicism ( a jaded, scornful negativity) which leads me to think that nothing can change.
Greenbelt challenged me that things can change, things are changing for the better, for the common good...
Jim Wallis suggested that skepticism of our unjust institutions is healthy. But cynicism is dangerous because it believes that nothing can change.
So I've been challenged to remain skeptical but to use to fuel a dogged perseverance to get things changed!!!

More on Greenbelt coming soon...

Here's a synopsis of the Middle East situation by prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh:

In the Middle (Dark) Ages, there was instability/mayhem in Europe. In those decades, the Arab and Muslim world lived its golden age of secularism, discovery, and science. Europe was divided between secularists and religious zealots trying to maintain Church domination. But the Arab world, unlike Europe is not left to its own devices to evolve. We are not independent to guide our future whether in Egypt or Syria. The implanting of Israel here as a spoiled child of Western imperialism and the subsequent continuing interference prevented either secular or Islamic forces to gain real independent power. It also prevents natural evolution. Imperial forces toppled secular nationalists represented by Gamal Abdulnasser and through the Egyptian military prevented political Islam from taking a foot hold.  There is a game of occasionally supporting one faction over another as long as that faction leaves Israel and Western Corporate interests alone.  This is the strategy of divide and conquer.

Citizens of Western Countries must demand that their governments stop supporting this sick game of divide and conquer that also fosters Christian, Islamic and Jewish fanaticism. Long-term, there will be separation of religion from state politics whether in Palestine (Israel as a “Jewish state”) or in Egypt or elsewhere.  We will have our own renaissance.  But for now, perhaps it is important that all forces (left, Islamic etc.) to join hands against the real enemy and gain true sovereignty of our countries.  It has been nearly a hundred years since the Sykes-Picot agreement (1916) and the Balfour Declaration (1917).  Is it not time to end the mayhem that they generated?  This will give us space for then arguing and pushing for whatever form of government people choose. In that case, diversity of ideas will be an asset not a hindrance. This will give us space and substance for natural evolution. 

Lenin & Francis

Here's a meditation by Richard Rohr:

Shortly before he died, Lenin is supposed to have said that if the Russian revolution were to take place over again, he would have asked for ten Francises of Assisi rather than more Bolsheviks. He eventually realized that something imposed by domination and violence from above only creates the same mirrored response from below. It is just a matter of time. He realized that the only communism that would ever be helpful to the world was the voluntary and joyous simplicity of a Francis of Assisi. (As a Franciscan, I am indeed a “communist” as we share all things equally and from a common purse.) That element of the practice of the early church (Acts 2:44) and of Jesus (John 13:29) was never expected of the rest of us. (One does wonder why some things become mandated from one mention by Jesus, and other things are totally forgotten?)

Voluntary simplicity was normally not lived by the clergy—certainly not the higher clergy—and therefore why would we, or could we, ask it of the rest of the church? Jesus was training the leaders first, because you can only ask of others what you yourselves have done. He was initiating them as spiritual elders, much more than ordaining them as “priests” (which is an Old Testament word never used for his apostles) or church ministers. Francis tried to correct that by refusing ordination and also by his rush toward simplicity.

Once we saw the clerical state as a place of advancement instead of downward mobility, once ordination was not a form of initiation but a continuation of patriarchal patterns, the authentic preaching of the Gospel became the exception rather than the norm—whether Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant. The first human “demon” that normally needs to be exposed is the human addiction to power, prestige, and possessions. These tend to pollute everything.

Once we preach the true Gospel, I doubt if we are going to fill the churches.

The Crack in Everything

Here's a thought from Richard Rohr,

Leonard Cohen’s song, “Anthem,” states in the refrain: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” It sounds a lot like Paul’s statement about carrying “the treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Corinthians 4:7). These are both much more poetic ways of naming what we unfortunately called “original sin”—a poor choice of words because the word sin implies fault and culpability, and that is precisely not the point! Original sin was trying to warn us that the flaw at the heart of all reality is nothing we did personally, but that there is simply “a crack in everything” and so we should not be surprised when it shows itself in us or in everything else. This has the power to keep us patient, humble, and less judgmental. (One wonders if this does not also make the point that poetry and music are a better way to teach spiritual things than mental concepts.)

The deep intuitions of most church doctrines are invariably profound and correct, but they are still expressed in mechanical and literal language that everybody adores, stumbles over, denies, or fights. Hold on for a while until you get to the real meaning, which is far more than the literal meaning! That allows you to creatively both understand and critique things—without becoming oppositional, hateful, arrogant, and bitter yourself. Some call this “appreciative inquiry” and it has an entirely different tone that does not invite or create “the equal and opposite reaction” of physics. The opposite of contemplation is not action; it is reaction. Much of the “inconsistent ethic of life,” in my opinion, is based on ideological reactions and groupthink, not humble discernment of how darkness hides and “how the light gets in” to almost everything. I hope I do not shock you, but it is really possible to have very “ugly morality” and sometimes rather “beautiful immorality.” Please think and pray about that.

Jacques Ellul - Anarchie et christianisme

i just picked up Jacques Ellul's book 'anarchie et christianisme' and found a few quotes/notes:

La révélation de Jésus ne doit pas donner naissance à une religion. Toute religion est porteuse de guerre...mais la Parole de Dieu n'est pas un 'religion', c'est la plus grosse trahison d'en avoir fait une.

The revelation of Jesus mustn't give birth to a religion. All religion creates war... but the Word of God is not a 'religion', the greatest treason is to have made one from it.

La vérité , c'est une personne! Il n'est pas question d'adhérer à une "doctrine chrétienne":il est question de faire confiance à une personne qui vous parle.

The truth is a person! It's not a question to adhere to a "christian doctrine" it's a question of trusting a person who speaks.

Dieu continue à aimer sa création, il attend d'en être aimé.

God continues to love his creation, he's waiting to be loved by it.

Dieu est amour, l'homme est le répondant de cet amour, l'amour ne peut pas être obligé, contraint, ordonné... LA LIBERTÉ

God is love, mankind is the 'guarantor' of this love, love can not be obliged, forced, commanded... FREEDOM!

Le Dieu biblique n'est en rien une machine, un grand ordinateur avec qui on peut pas discuter et qui fonctionne selon un programme et l'homme n'est pas pour Dieu un robot qui n'a qu'à exécuter la décision de son constructeur.

The God of the Bible is not  a machine, a powerful computer with whom one can not speak and which fonctions according to a programme. And humankind is not for God a robot who has no choice but to execute the decision of its constructor.

Are You Ready To Turn On The Light ?

Here's an AdBusters message:

Here’s the question everyone is asking: “Is Edward Snowden a hero or a criminal, a whistleblower or a traitor?”

But the question they should really be asking is, “Does America still have its original revolutionary backbone, or are we a nation of sheep?”

Conventional opinion says that the CIA will have Snowden extradited and then criminalized, put on trial like Bradley Manning, demonized like Daniel Ellsberg, or even murdered like Garry Webb – that he will spend at least ten years in prison, or life, or worse. This may well happen, but there is another, much more tantalizing possibility that Snowden’s courageous action has triggered, something much more momentous – a sudden unexpected shift in the American Psyche – a realization that since 9/11 something has gone terribly wrong in the land of the free and the home of the brave… that the NSA, CIA, FBI are starting to smell like the East German’s Stasi, The Russian KGB, The Fascist police states of the 1930’s and 1940’s – that Americans are spying on Americans… that we are being treated like a nation of petrified snitches cowering in the dark… and that the time has come to turn the light on in America.

This weekend, someone working at NSA headquarters might just get fed up, once and for all, with spying on their fellow citizens and turn on another light in that big, black box… telling us in detail how things really work in there.

Then, maybe next week, a CIA operative at the Pentagon will suddenly decide to come clean and tell us how the Iraq war really started and provide us with one of those torture videos that were supposedly destroyed.

And then, maybe an army intelligence officer will fill us in on what really happened in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen – letting us know who our allies really are and which regimes we really support in the deep global state behind the veneer of mainstream media. Then…

Maybe on July 4th someone at The Whitehouse will remember that this nation was built upon revolution… and that the nation’s integrity, democracy – hell, the nation’s entire future – depends upon the existence of people like Snowden who dare to tell us what really goes on behind closed doors, and that these otherwise ordinary people continue to summon the courage and humanity to come out of the shadows and take a stand against institutionalized criminality.

Maybe, like at the end of a movie, when the hero finally reveals his true identity and everyone rises to applause, an unstoppable wave of courageous souls will now stand up in solidarity and turn the lights on all over this darkened nation, kicking off a chain reaction of refusal against the military-surveillance complex that President Eisenhower tried to warn us against half a century ago.

So hey all you dreamers, schemers and expectant souls out there, are you ready to turn on the light?