Believe and Macro-Stories

Just finished reading Marcus Borg's book 'Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time' (1994).
He ends the book by speaking of 3 macro-stories that are found in the Bible and that also shape our understanding of God and the Christian life.
The first is Exodus story (meaning 'the way out/the road out') the story of Israel's bondage in Egypt under Pharaoh and their liberation.
The second is the story of Exile and return when the people of Israel were exiled in Babylon and later were delivered and able to return home.
The third is the priestly story - centered in the Temple, sacrifice and the priesthood. The story of sin, guilt, sacrifice, and forgiveness.

All three speak of journey, God's compassion and liberation. We can return home, be set free from our bondages and addictions, and know that we are completely accepted by God.
They all speak of hope.
We are called to be disciples of Jesus - those that follow after him.

The Bible speaks of 'believing in Jesus'. Believing literally means 'to give one's heart to'. So we are mistaken if we think that  believing in Jesus means to intellectually consent to a set of dogmas and facts about him and the church. To believe in Jesus is a thing of the heart, it's a relationship...

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time - is an enjoyable read - challenging at times and brings a fresh understanding of Jesus (in 1994). Borg has written several books since so the ideas in the book are no longer new but the Meeting Jesus... is both concise and easy to understand which helps the reader to grasp some important points in Borg's thinking.

Bradley Smith @ Seclin

The 4th Seclin Motor Show took place over the weekend. Yesterday I took a butchers. Loads of bikes...great atmosphere!
Brit Motogp rider Bradley Smithwas present signing autographs. I couldn't resist having a chat with my fellow Briton, getting his autograph and a wee photo.

Bradley rides for French owned team Yamaha Tech 3. Unfortunately he crashed on the opening race at Qatar with only 6 laps to go and running 4th place. He's a great rider and he could do well this year. Only his second year in Motogp for the 23 year old.

Good luck Bradley :)

A quote from Richard Rohr:

Religion is largely populated by people afraid of hell; spirituality begins to make sense to those who have been through hell—that is, who have drunk deeply of life’s difficulties.

Stinkin Thinkin

Here's a thought-provoking meditation by Richard Rohr - explaining the dangers of dualist thinking and the necessity not to judge - which follows the teaching of Jesus.

Although we begin life, as very young children, as non-dual thinkers, usually by the age of seven we are all dualistic thinkers, and sadly many of us stay that way for the rest of our lives. Dualistic thinking is the well-practiced pattern of knowing most things by comparison. And for some reason, once we compare or label things (that is, judge things), we almost always conclude that one is good and the other not so good or even bad.

Don’t take my word for it; just notice your own thoughts and reactions. You will see that you will move almost automatically into a pattern of up or down, in or out, for me or against me, right or wrong, black or white, gay or straight, good or bad. It is the basic reason why the “stinkin’ thinkin’” of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, religious imperialism, and prejudice of all kinds is so hard to overcome and has lasted so long—even among nice people!

At the risk of being too cleverly alliterative (though it may help you to remember), here is the normal sequencing of the dualistic mind: it compares, it competes, it conflicts, it conspires, it condemns, it cancels out any contrary evidence, and then it crucifies with impunity. You can call it the seven C’s of delusion. This is the source of most violence, which is invariably sacralized as good and necessary to “make the world safe for democracy” or to “save souls for heaven.”

There is a reason why Jesus and all the great spiritual teachers say, “Do not judge!” and why angels in the Bible are always saying, “Do not be afraid!” Our violence—and almost all of our unhappiness—emerges from our judging, dualistic mind—which itself comes from deeply rooted fear. Only unitive, non-dual consciousness can heal this violence and lead us to a rather constant happiness.

More Real Than Gravity Itself

So a film curiously named after a scientific term triumphed at the Bafta awards and there seems general agreement thatGravity is an extraordinary production.

Gravity  adopts a most basic form of drama – actors seen only as faces within spacesuits. Everything else in the film is simply not real. Every frame consists almost entirely of computer-generated special effects. These are so stunning that audiences have found it totally convincing.

But such technical genius brings us more than entertainment and valuable therapeutic escapism. It also offers an unsettling lesson on how easily the ‘not real’ can master the consciousness and so overshadow ‘the real’ altogether.

On this score, maybe Christians should more often well … get real. For we might be more in danger of unreality’s seductive spell than anyone else. The closeness that binds the faithful together can easily get the better of us so that we become too cosy, safe and insular.

“Why do people in church have to be so nice?” a teenager once complained bitterly to me. Could she really mean us? Yes of course. We wouldn’t wilfully hurt even a tree-beetle but we still grow de-sensitised to inhumanity all around us. However, scripture actually prizes the real above all.

Only a response to the real can set people free. Repentance, initial or constant, springs from cold recognition of what we secretly are: the real us. And Jesus has already inhabited places of harsh reality in order to liberate its oppressed people.

Our news media have made a brilliant job this week of popping the ‘not real’ bubble for everyone. The ‘real world’ has reasserted itself in disturbing ways over comfortable lives. Reports appear of the troubling extent of UK child-trafficking. Cruel floods and traumas strike those formerly considered better-off. And despite hopes of UK money helping to restore human rights in Sudan, an outrage is reported there – the jailing of a pregnant woman for the seeming crime of being raped. The Ukraine looks on the brink of civil war.

But perhaps most shocking of all is the UN’s report on North Korea detailed by theGuardian. The special commission on human rights has extensively documented thekwanliso, prison camps where hundreds of thousands have already suffered execution or starvation to death. Harrowing stories abound: a woman being beaten by a guard until she finally does what’s demanded of her – to drown her own baby and so stop it crying; a boy having his finger chopped off for accidentally dropping a sewing machine; chillingly, prison camps holding some people actually abducted from other countries. Tragically, this is ‘the real’ for millions, perhaps billions, in the world.

But there’s good news embedded in the bad. And it is ‘the real’ just as much as any harrowing headline. A television report on North Korean escapees asked just how these traumatised people are managing to enter a recovery process. Answer given: through the love and support of Korean churches. A poignant and moving clip follows of Korean Christians embracing escapees and welcoming them into fellowship and care. And the victims of so much brutality do attribute their progressive healing to the love and practicality of believers. Surely it’s this that scripture sees as the ultimate, ‘real’ experience for Church. Church is real when prisoners are being set free and hearts and minds healed there in every way.

So now we have the definitive form of ‘real’ – compassion in action. It trumps all dark things that are also real. But it demands the conscious choice of the will. Over and over again.

Roy Kearsley is an author and former theology and mission lecturer based in Cardiff 

Knowing Jesus

I've just finished reading the classic 'Knowing Jesus' by james Alison.

I'll just quote the end paragraph of the book (in may not do justice to the entire book but it's an excellent conclusion):

"... we  become disciples by serving serving that the intelligence of the victim (Holy Spirit) reveals to us, we will find that we have come to know Jesus, and the Father. We will be surprised to discover that what appears to be a road leading only to exclusion, and narrowing horizons, turns instead into a highway of ever increasing diversity, and the richness of learning to be moved by Another, Another who is quite without rivalry or possessiveness. And there we will know without the hidden traps of our self-delusion blinding us; we will know as we are known, and discover that our knowledge of Jesus was nothing at all compared to his knowledge of, and love for, us." James Alison

I appreciate the idea of a highway of ever increasing diversity, knowing Jesus leads us to inclusion instead of exclusion... the knowledge of Jesus gradually leads us into wider spaces...leading us into the knowledge of a God who loves...A God who is defined by love...the Father who loves the world and by imitating the Son, who imitates the Father we will be led to love the world. To receive the releasing of forgiveness that loosens us from  self-victimization, self-loathing, so that we can embrace our human ordinariness so as to immerse ourselves and relate to the world and its ordinariness and realizing that we are in complicity with its faults and violence.
Our sins no longer block us off from others, but are now made healthy in becoming a medium of solidarity instead of a motive of separation. In knowing Jesus we begin to hate our sin, not in a personal self-loathing way, but we hate our sin because of the harmful effect it has on others.

Open up your horizons!

A Prayer for the union with Divine Reality

Here's a prayer by James Finley:

May each of us be so fortunate as to be overtaken by God in the midst of little things. May we each be so blessed as to be finished off by God, swooping down from above or welling up from beneath, to extinguish the illusion of separateness that perpetuates our fears. May we, in having our illusory, separate self slain by God, be born into a new and true awareness of who we really are: one with God forever. May we continue on in this true awareness, seeing in each and every little thing we see the fullness of God’s presence in our lives. May we also be someone in whose presence others are better able to recognize God’s presence in their lives, so that they, too, might know the freedom of the children of God.