Hospital

Dallas Willard calls on Christians to see their church as a hospital, a spiritual hospital. It should be a place to care for other people. Some are hurting. Some have been wounded by the world, and by others. Some need medicine and all need good refreshment and rest.

Hospitality... the share root word of hospital also. . . that's where we can gain our inspiration from the culture of church and church fellowship and community.

If we've lost our sight as people of God in community... we have to gain it here first I think. It is time to get well.

Really Real reality

In a world where all things are considered equally truth nothing can be false.

In that world everything is negated.

Negation voids value.

Without value we lose meaning.

Not just meaning of truth,but of reality. Reality as we have known it.


Now it is time to find out what is really real.

Reality as you like it or as it is?

Neitzsche (1844-1900) defined truth as a "mobile army of metaphors" and it seems this the way we have "deconstructed it" or perceived it. However if this is truth, or actual reality, it is a moving not a fixed point. If that is true than you or anyone can pick a point for truth arbitrarily. If truth is arbitrary as Neitzsche believed, a train plunging into a dark tunnel never to emerge, then meaning itself is arbitrary and meaningless. Life is pointless and absurd. It has no set value. Philosophers should stop their work and we should all kill ourselves, right? This mindset's verdict claims truth and reality is meaningless. But doesn't it seem like there must be more to it than that?

Beauty and goodness point to something more. Our dreams, hopes, and stories beg for more. Our songs, arts, histories and epics have heroes that triumph over villains. We must ask why? It cannot just be vain hope. That's too simple an answer. Reality seems to have an ideal, and an ideal indicates a fixed point, not mobile army of metaphors. The mobile army explanation is helpful for cynics and a way to band-aid one's despair, but it takes us literally nowhere. It does not take us to reason because it doesn't really make sense. It does not take us to reality.

Deconstruction can be very helpful, but we've hardly attempted to deconstruct the history and culture that has deconstructed the nature of our current perceptions of reality and truth. Most of the time we take these paradigms and beliefs for granted like fish in a bowl who do not know they are wet. After we notice how we have been reduced and were we have been carried by our mobile army we may discover Socrates is closer to the truth than we are.

lectio divina

I will be studying Lectio Divina for my 8 week personal and research project. If anyone is interested in learning more about this spiritual disciple of the early church, we can journey together. You can write and let me know.

This has been wonderful discovery of focusing on a scared text of a few lines and reading it while allowing God to speak into it and through it. There are 4 movements to it. And the prayer life that happens from this communion with God I've found very intimate and restful.

I'll keep you posted and add details soon.

what if shopping has replaced community?

I wondered something as I went to the mall with my family for the first time in a few years. We all went together this Saturday and walked around-- and we ended up without making a single purchase fortunately.

Since then, I've wondered if we believe, somewhere inside, that something outside, something we can purchase is going to fill up that empty spot. Something shinny and new will make us shinny and new. As if the activity of shopping makes us more not less "human".

As social creatures we are hoping for connection. Not just hoping--we must have it. We were made for it. The sales adverts reach out to us, they offer something alluring. They offer prestige, better associations, sex appeal, and other things. They make promises.

On Saturday, each store had ceiling to floor banners, window graphic, manikins, decor, monitors, or music to seduce, or combination thereof. Business is business after all. It's a pseudo-social activity if you think about it. You can be alone and feel like you've been with others. Why should we bother sitting down and connecting with people when we can just shop? We can bargain hunt and we can pretend we aren't trying to numb something.

Or we can be face-to-face for a while and start being real.

Community starts with admitting what idols really are, and where they turn up. Culture is bent to push the NEED to consume (acquire goods), but the this is a false assumption. The true need is to connect in loving and honest ways, and been known and truly loved.

community

The strengths of community are also its weaknesses. Since the journey is our lives and the destination is the evermore how do we harmonize consistently with what is essential for the journey?

As much as I want to and as much as my heart is there I sense the drifting of the church body to become like me academic, closed off, theoretical, and become weary of or discouraged about the shortcomings of their brothers and sisters (other human beings) ... which is so terribly ironic, and really sort of sad.

I don't believe their is a formula here, a quick fix, a button in the mind to simply tweak. It seems a reorientation about community that lasts beyond a few rounds of Bible studies, and a sermon series, has to transform our hearts so we see each other differently.

Is this possible?
If so, How has it happened before?

moving beyond experience

After experience, what's left?

If times get dry, if he seems not to answer, we are left with the feeling that feelings are just feelings. So we have to know that knowings are what has been part of the balance. And the balance will ground us. The experience will enrich us and the moorings will sustain it.

rob bell's video

I saw a quick video of Rob Bell's new book "everything is spiritual" and it was great. he explained how the physical and the spiritual cannot be separated. What is "non spiritual" is actually then misnomer. Hebrew language has no word for spiritual. People by nature are fused with spirituality. In modernity we tend to fracture ourselves into different "lives" sections, arenas, natures... very unnaturally it seems.


I don't know much about Rob Bell. I know he's polarizing. He shakes things up. Some scream he's a heretic. Some think he's just what we need. Some think he's too much of one certain thing. I'd like to meet he, chat for a while, and see for myself, his brief video was though 100% true. We are Gods. We are spiritual in physical shells.

FACEBOOK- spencer burke and out of the ooze

To those of you who clued into Facebook, you are invited to join the group there called "Out of the Ooze Volume 1" The contributing authors are there and will entertain questions. Spencer will likely be traveling the country fostering discussion about many emerging voices in Christianity, and the work his website TheOoze has been engaged in.

Christmas SURPRISE

In the paper I'm doing now, that I hope to pitch to publishers, I was fascinated to learn the Jewish people were not expecting a virgin birth. This is one of the reasons to believe the Gospel are true in fact. Matthew and Luke didn't need to fit a mold when writing their conception narratives. This would be a shocker to the readers of their texts, and likely a detail that came from Mary as a detail of the unusual way her first born came into the world. Though Isaiah wrote "the "virgin" will conceive" he was predicting the birth of Hezekiah the heir of King Ahaz. They did not know this was a double prediction and thought the Messiah would be born to normal parents in a normal way.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

pulse in and beyond the pews

the new website that goes with the book has a blogspot that promises to be an engaging spot for those in and outside the Christian community.

outoftheooze.theooze.com/

Mark as Sermon- time to listen

The Gospel of Mark can read read as a sermon... performed if you will, in about 45 min. This gives credence to the notion that it came by way of writing down Peter's oration of his personal testimony of Jesus by John Mark. The language and tone of the text has immediacy. It is action oriented. It has dramatic flare unlike the other gospels which makes sense if you are hearing versus reading the words. This gospel is probably one of the best records of what first century preaching sounded like, and perhaps the next time you read mark, you hear it differently.

Out Of the OOZE!

Just got my free copies of o"Out of the Ooze"... it's fun. I had no idea some ramblings and on the fly emails would get published. Now that they are, it's a bit WEIRD!!!

technology

In the times of King David, the Philistines had the advantage. The reason? Technology. Iron, and mastery of its use in warfare made one’s culture gain superiority. Was David was on the run from Saul and gained favor with the Philistines, he was given a wife and a city. It’s possible he brought the technology of iron with him. Once these secrets and skills were in the hands of Israel, the Philistines domination rapidly declined.

When we’ve found Love to be the answer, we have to master the technologies of our cultures to affect them for the powers of good.

on being human . .

South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu : "Ubuntu is the essence of being human [...] we say a person is a person through other persons. You can't be a human in isolation. You are human only in relationships. [...] So we say that 'I need you to be all of who you are in order for me to be all that I am.' Because no human being is totally self-sufficient. In fact, a self-sufficient human being is subhuman." [...] If you want to be human, we are not going to be able to be human in isolation. It will be that we are human together."

Anger: Car horn or warning light

Anger is normal and not unspiritual. It is an expression of hurt, frustration, or fear. An angry person suffers from one, or more of those three things, which is a rather sad thing. Angry people are hurting people. Do you struggle with anger? If so, you have pain you need to deal with. I have pain I need to deal with, so I know how you feel. Part of writing this is part of my healing process.

Anger, though a reasonable feeling, makes us unreasonable as we hang on to it. We get unreasonable very quickly. Anger ferments and becomes a poison and gets ugly and hateful. (We find out we’re indeed sinners.) Acknowledging the reasonable feelings behind anger (hurt, fear, or frustration), and giving anger up sets us free–from the poison anger becomes to us, and the consequences of hurting others by vomiting this poison out in some way.

Maybe we have felt our feelings are inappropriate or unchristian. Feelings themselves are not right or wrong, just like knives in a kitchen are not in themselves wrong or unsafe. It is simply how knives are used that is appropriate or inappropriate, safe or unsafe. Using feelings incorrectly is very unsafe. Using knives incorrectly is unsafe. Chopping vegetables for soup carefully on a cutting board–good. Chucking a butcher knife at your husband–bad. Angry words and deeds are the same way.

Anger, like dairy products, spoil and become useless–so please, don’t let it stink up and ruin your life. When you feel anger rear it’s head, locate its source: Are you hurt, frustrated, or fearful? And why? Be honest with yourself, and grow from your findings. Then, let your anger ease. Give it to God. Lay it at his feet. It’s too much for you to bear and you weren’t meant to carry that burden. Life is painful enough. We really don’t need to make it harder on ourselves. Abandoning our anger quickly will spare us pain and give us more freedom to forgive, love, and be loved.

convincing vs. ?

We think convincing someone of God as we see him to be is more important than loving them as we see that he loves.

Behavior, being so very good

"Witnessing" isn't just showing others our religion is elaborate behavior modification system. I've seen so many try to SHOW "the world" they are DIFFERENT. They try to protray the --do's and don'ts list. -- the "I'm a good girl, or good boy role" This they think proves something. Something big must be going on, surely "the world", or sinners will wnat some.

Love trumps this. True love for them (the world), and true love of God too. The kind of love that is unaware of itself, because it is enraptured with such a great and gracious God. It speaks volumes. It's just rare to see it in the religious, and in "good girls" and "good boys".

Our behavior will follow, but it's not the place to start. Love is the thing. Compassion.

Emerging beyond 40 days - my guest writer gig

Hi there,

I was asked to be a contributing writer to a porpoise diving life for the month of September. My article is called Yahweh and Grace.

Here is the link:

http://theporpoisedivinglife.com/porpoise-diving-life.asp?pageID=40

visiting a sour church

We visited a church. It makes me glad we attend the church that we do. At this one, God seemed sneakier. He was going to be checking up on people A LOT. He was seeing if we were being good girls and boys. Seeing if they were being naughty or nice, checking a list, twice. WAIT A MINUTE!!!!

Maybe that was a false god! I think we were learning about Santa, and it was being presented as the coming Christ. That's the trouble with dogmatic prophetic teachings. You have to do gymnastics to make them all work out, and God comes off looking like a total jerk in the process.

I just kept thinking, if this was my first time at church, I would NEVER return. How sad that God is depicted as such a bad guy, or a sour fragrance.

It is the message of grace that is transforming. The message of "checking up on you" is already covered by speed trapping police hiding in the bushes. That sort of thing is nothing NEW. It doesn't bring people to repentance-- it brings them to resentment. On the contrary, it is the message of amazing love, abounding grace, and reconciliation that melts the hardened heart. It changes the command center of a person to wish to unite with acceptance and love, and feel connected and free for the first time ever.

I think as followers of Jesus, we have to pour out THIS fragrance to an unbelieving world.