G~Õ~D is LIFE--Processing & Evolving ... Forever

Good read Rev King, the Gospel of Thomas gives us a good insight into yet another interpretation of the words of Jesus. It would've been pretty interesting if Jesus himself ever wrote a gospel. Is this gospel of Thomas the closest thing we have to a possible eye witness account of Jesus?

I think the Gospel of Thomas, along with the other so-called "Gnostic Gospels," was written much later than the lifetime of Jesus or shortly afterwards. Some of it reads like Far-Eastern thought, though, and could have arisen from the contact of the North African Christian Gnostics with India. It probably was not written by Thomas himself, but is the "Gospel according to Thomas," meaning it contains Thomas' oral biography of Jesus, told and re-told and eventually written down, and probably coloured by the traditions of the group who wrote it down, the North African Gnostic Christians.

 

I, too, think that the Gnostic Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas in particular, come closer to the actual teachings of Jesus than the Canonical Gospels, but there is no actual evidence of this. It appears that the various offshoots of the original Jesus movement each had their own version of the teachings and the biography of Jesus.

 

We have no actual eyewitness account of Jesus. The only writings that authentically date back to the time of Jesus or shorly afterwards are the writings of Paul, who did not bother to familiarize himself with the family of Jesus or his close associates, and report what they told him about Jesus, but rather pushed his own agenda, so that traditional Christian religion is more Pauline than "Jesuine."

T'om as the book of life ... gamma/omicrone/delta (rod/staff/comfort) the Levite of the eternal reciprocal triangle ... icon of mystique ... an esteemed line to know ...

Thanks NEO:

I just posted this in my visit with an atheist friend I have LYNNE:

http://forums.about.com/n/Pfx/forum.aspx/?tsn=114&nav=messages&webtag=ab...

===================================

 

God on tilde ... if you look at it from a different perspective!

 

Would this require a mensal peculiarity ... like alien psyche ... strange means ... to a conjecture about putting emotional intelligence together in a lifetime of experience?

 

From purely on one side or the other of polity ... such would be hard to take in an akward season! Wait until we get beyond this state ... it may be just a mental sic Ness ...

 

Some require recycling ... another spin in this human chaos! Isn't that a pain ... such words that are mostly misunderstood? There's a pile of eM out there as structuring material for the soul ... bottom lyon that genteel learning ... a devilish thinker is ru'agh on gods population! Alas ITs beyond eM ... like myth until undergoing a vast stretch ...

For quite a while now, my main source and main study has been Robert Price's Pre-Nicene New Testament with its 54 gospels. Price, as you'll know, holds that the historical evidence is insufficient to support the existence of an historical Jesus. And, on purely historical grounds, I'd agree.

 

But the gospels only started to be written around the time that Nero launched the first persection of Christians, that the Jewish rebellion ended in the destruction of jerualem and the Temple, and the massacre and enslavement of Jerusalam's citizenry and the fall of Massada. There was another big nassacre of Jews in Damascus. Over a very few years, all that stood for Judaism suffered a savage trashing.

 

To Jews, anywhere in the Roman Empire, it must have seemed like the end of time. THIS, not any adevent of literacy,  is when we see communities committing their most precious teachings to writing: it's a sign of a culture in collapse or extreme fear of collapse… it's when the end's in sight that cultures expose their sacred stories to the profanity of print; it has happened in the Pacific, in Asia, in the America's…  (I'm currently reading 'The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman' which is exactly that). 

 

So it's John of Patmos’ dread and hallucinations that are poured out in the Book of Revelation (“apokalypsis”). That first word — which simply meant “revelation” in his Alexandrian Greek — found its way into English as “apocalypse”, a word the Oxford Dictionary now defines as “an event involving destruction or damage on a catastrophic scale”. Christian eschatology was born and the banalities of disease and conquest, war, famine and death — that stalked the World long before the fall of Jerusalem — gained dark celebrity as The Four Horsemen. These horrors continue to stalk the World, obscuring the hope and joy that permeate Jesus’ teachings. (And, understandably, martyrdom entered mainstream Christian consciousness in ways that Jesus seems not necessarily to have intended or envisaged.)

 

Among less fevered minds than John's, the array of giospels show us followers of Jesus, teachers and scribes, securing their only treasure by writing down the core of it all. But there are stil undercurrents of fear and uncertainty that contrast with the oft-repeated injunctions to "fear not".

 

Some in the earliest "church" saw the future lying among peoples of the Roman World… the only accessible power where “civilization” survived… after all, Acts recalls the stoning of a deacon, Stephen, was by Jews in around 34 CE: Christianity's first recorded post-Jesus martyrdom (as far as I know).

 

Others were loathe to surrender their Jewish roots and recoiled from Rome’s brutality.

But, quite apart from the chances that whatever was written down might be coloured by the horrific experiences of the period, there are longer-term dangers in writing such material down.

The written word assumes contextual continua, and radical or abrupt external change can be ruinous. In Christianity’s case, Roman state authorization and an approved cannon of sources was more deeply (if less obviously) damaging than the persecutions. Roman Catholicism has spent 1500 years coming to terms with it and continues to struggle. Protestantism’s embrace of the social liberation that accompanied Rationalism and the Enlightenment, and our delight in the regicides that culminated in the extinction of the Romanovs, were at the expense of our capacities for faith — not because of the social improvements they gave us but because of the way the foundations our conceptual universe were shifted.

 

Now, for example, younger people mostly find literature like that Edmund Spenser (whose work gave me my most valuable education in writing and excited me when I was eight years' old) and Shakespeare totally unreadable: 500 years of social change has drop-kicked some of our most culturally significant literature out of the park. Jesus’ skills and arts found their reason, power and significance in a time and place 1500 years and several cultures further removed from us than Shakespeare, Marlow, Chaucer and Spenser. We lose the plot when we ignore those chasms.

 

We mustn’t let ourselves be so awed by the Bible’s significance that we overlook its conceptual collapse. Translations and the contexts in which we offer it to the World only make it worse. The more we try to "explain" it all, the further we get from the meaning. By way of contrast, although the Arab world has changed dramatically, the Holy Q’ran is still borne aloft on the vivacity and cultural dynamism of the Arabic language and script. It still has living referents and contexts that make accessible. In translation, it suffers.

 

How do we rediscover the wealth of Jesus’ ministry?

 

A good place to start is to learn the ways of listening that survive in primal cultures, even among Canada’s too-widely despised native peoples — we need to learn to listen to story and let it transform us as we question, debate and discuss what it “really, really means”, and how to fill the gaps from our own spiritual — not cerebral —engagement. We need to get the ART of participative, creative listening.

 

We need to get out of our heads and hearts the sickness of understanding that demands pedestrian factuality. That exists and fiunctions nicely for the culture that surrounds us. When we learn to listen to stories — all stories — not for what they might “mean” but for what they “do” to us and what they reveal in us, we find that some make quick connections and draw us on into trust, love, faith and action. Some seem utterly incoherent. There is a necessary aggregation of experienced insight that opens these stories to us. We need to allow self-transformation. (And that can be hazardous: there are accounts of audience members, hearing the early Greek tragedies in their anient original form, being struck dead by the moral and emotional intensity they experienced as their own.)

 

There’s not a word of it we have to “believe”. Rather, we need to let the wisdom radiate, like the smells of hot bread fresh from the oven…  scripture can be as irresistible. “The Kingdom” is WITHIN… what we “know” and “believe” and “measure” and weigh and “reasonably conclude” is out “there”: building roads, raising architecture, fashioning machines : it’s “Caesar stuff”.

 

Transformed by engaged listening, though, we can take goodness into Caesar’s World, we can take justice and compassion, fearlessness and love… once our faith commands it. We cannot serve two masters and Caesar can own us only by our complicity and consent. Caesar’s World will become a better place for our faith and, a better place, it will give Caesar less scope for the brutal imposition… the daily news tells us there’s a big future for that kind of “goodness”.

 

Mike,

Such a world requires a useful (Utilitarian) theology that covers all and not just for the benefit of a powerful (judy'n) few ... would those that wish total freedom to do as they desire accept this? There is too much entertainment built upon the Ba Sis of my way with all alchemii disconnected! Isolationism is fatal attraction ...

 

"the Holy Q’ran ... in tranlation, it suffers!"   If only the common people could read this in its mother tongue. The redactions (intentional-unintentional alteration?) would be obvious.  We have to ask what European crusades to the Middle East were really about ... the Holy Land or a vacant crossroads of international maketplace? Does this history in light of Ja-Su ... simply mean the aboriginal culture (of hospitalier) was corrupted by avarice?

 

When the old scripts are taken in context of classic languages (old and ancient tongues) another story evolves ... but my god is it difficult to get by pious conditioning! I have difficulty with this stoney conception!

 

This is a human condition that reaches far beyond church. I ran into this in dumb business practices that just wasn't reasonable ... millions being spent to cover up the mistakes by those in airy places! Some say there isn't an unconscious mind ... show me a man infected terminally with entitled desire for richess and I'll show you a high probabilty for unreasonable behavioural traits. There are exceptions ... as to all rules ... even pertaining to gods and daemons ... the parents of demo-crazy? That would be the apparent view from the top.

 

Hermenuetic (following) the exegete blindly is as terminal as Beau Gest!

 

But how would Eire/eerie/oure leaders know if they didn't experience liberal art form of the defied mind that is forced to be devious and reciprocal?

 

It appears this is not for them to know in the spirit of the tree and Genesis 2! But what is un apparent ... unseen in the text? That would be satyr to the powerful few ... no? Did the Caesars deal with Lo' Crease? In the spirit of Pogo ... read The Swerve and the mideval reaction to altered observations... it sen ough to make the masses nail (onyx) someone's hide to to the bairn dor' ...

 

Like if you chew over this stuff enough does the loss of flavour for out-distanced (worn-out) roué lead to ruse ... generation of alternate myths that differ from the chit from on high? The night was dark and Skye was Bleu and thro (per) the Eire a Pi'spot (bo'sun as Shadow) Flew ... it hit the wahl ... there was dissonance ... the population (eM) has patience but only so much (Marx?) and then ... the hidden spirit exits! THIS MAY NOT BE A PRETTY SIGHT ... and there may be exceptions ... like The First Phonecall from Heaven? When some authority wishes they weren't in such an obvious place ... and some like the recesses ... where one can keep their head down ... picture protests of the last two summers expanding as the synapse between rich and po'Eire expands (MIR-New Rons)! FDR would explain the faere deal ... and how Republican (conserving)  issues can alter history without eros of çharon! Somebody has to burn to wake to the threats ... sentience?

 

Face ID as a huge myth ... that when collected up ... na' they wouldn't believe IT's conversion ... reciprocation in the "i" of psyche (psi-chi; ψχ)? Relax it is just a code and you know how real people take to codes, codex and Semites! They are just icons of things unseen ... gone to preserve chaos ... the citii of gods ...

 

If you don't understand me that's good ... I won't be accused of thinking deeply about doubts that hang over us and our existence ... and all will be wished well, regardless of the mental state we're in! Is wisdom like happy ... just an unlikely state of mind for the emotional polity (extreme-ism)? You can call me mean, and I can be considered a medium that's right out of 'ere and a bit touched by thin Eire; devoid psyches? This is really not funny to the common folks when awakened to facts of Roman'vs ... the pits of ru'ma'nation giving the grass roots a going over? There's some depth there ...

The Crusades had a lot to do with wealth in the Middle East and curtailled access to the old Silk Road. And a bit to do with corruption and church decline in the West. You can read screeds about it and come up with a lot of confused motivations: not unlike the First Wortld War with its complicated decline and falling apart of old Empires.

 

WaterBuoy===================================================

Rarely, I mean really rarely, I mean seldom to the 30th power, that is I mean hardly EVER

---you make sense. 

Probably a slip on your part. Perhaps a linguistic mistake.

Mayce a crack in Mystical English.

 

Not that you care, your degnation of the opinions of others began with the amazement that those who have power are not necessarily the ones with wisdom.They select them. What is more universal than the phrase "They didn't believe me when I told them the truth."

Back to your making sense:

 

 

(That. from your profile)

That       is        perfect 

 

Now then; you post:

 

"the Holy Q’ran ... in tranlation, it suffers!"   If only the common people could read this in its mother tongue.

 

 

The common people? Those who are not aware of chemical engineering?

 

There are ways of reading like

 

With a respectful attitude, rather than a search for disagreements...

"YOUR POSTING STYLE ...WITHOUT TRANSLATION ITS EXTERBULENCY

(No, YOU go look it up)

A roving mind whose orbit becomes visible every never. can never be questioned because of no matter what.  you are off topic. Neeto!

 

You whine:

 

 ... but my god is it difficult to get by pious conditioning!

 

 

If that is a question the answer is no.

 

 

Once you get the hang of it (Accepting a non- convincing answer to 'why?')

RFA. Reach For Agreement is a group formed by

The Church of Relative Likelihood

Which I founded some 10 years ago: The only dogma: "Be Kind"

About 11 members. We do not congregate.

Reaching for agreement is fun. The best RFA was made on TV by the Mathematician who

founded String Theory.... He said he was raised a Buddhist who taught the Universe was

timeless, and coming to the U.S. a becoming a Christian where they taught the Universe had a beginning, he was relieved that quantum Physics said that both were true. (!)

 

I have difficulty with this stoney conception!

You are stoned? Explains everything!!!

 

If you don't understand me that's good ...

 

 

I wonder how many in here are understood, hell, I don't understand me; I love classical music why on the piano do I only play (red hot) Boogie Woogie?i

 

 

I won't be accused of thinking deeply about doubts

Science has proven that there are exactly 54,658,243,223 different things to be doubtful about.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

To be optimistic I think there are 12.

Smile!

You seem to be too serious John ...

 

Give the unknown some light ...

 

It's like a poke in the ass or a thorn in the tent fabric ... A' pall'n ... lyon in the san ... or just a seam as a fold in the mythical dimension ... as rift ... the soul being mostly abstract or allegorically imaginary as "i"?  Perhaps just a menial mental construct? A point to disturb those feeling greater?

 

Is learning anything a pain ... what about the larger Job of learning god knows what's out there?

 

Does one first have to believe God has a soul ... and is thus a thinking caring person? Are there deficits of this type in deep space? That'd be fallout ... descended angels?

 

This is beyond mortal ...  not so emotional and quick to react ... alas a very tight group until release ... 

: )

the texts are what they are...

these days, In search of the Gospel,

I come to you folks...

I learn from you...

and... in regards to religion and faith

it seems to work

So somebody dragged the old G~O~D! thread out of the archives and dusted it off.

 

Yes, Aldo, there are scores of sacred texts, and even more inspired writings by mystics, prophets, and poets, from ancient to present times.

 

Everything that was and is written and said about God is someone's more or less biased opinion. But nature is part of God, and God wrote ITself most truthfully into nature.

 

Natural science is, at least in part, theology. And it is the most truthful part of theolgy. The rest is specualtion.

 

 

The philospher Spinoza once wrote that only man can be God to man.

Science, like theology or philosophy or so many other means of understanding our existing, is a means of understanding. If the object of understanding is meaningful existence, science has yet to shine for us.

What I have learned is that science changes a lot... a level 1 history and philosphy of science course demonstartes that. In the end, it seems WaterBouy is onto to something --- everything is to explain is changing myth, be it theology or science or both.

I  do not see science as a being --- as I would you. In your being you can express or manifest God no theory or explanation required. You are able to and can present the mind of God (mind of Christ). Your presenting can help me to "put on" the mind of Christ if that is my aspiration.

I keep falling back on my existence and the existence of others to reveal God in me, and to present to me God in them. I suppose I find this existing is the surest means of participating in ultimate existential significance and purpose, and it seems to ring truest in our actual being.

regards

 

WBuoy, as you know, like you, because they are often needed to communicate new ideas,  I like creating neologisms and neo-acronyms.

 

With this in mind, some time ago, in a forum about process philosophy and process theology--based on the panentheistic writings of the great mathematician and philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead--I created the acronym G?D.

 

Recently, I used this, again, in the following thread--as part of a dialogue in the Atheists/Agnostics section of about.com  The dialogue is mostly with a positive and friendly atheist named Lynne. Which goes to show, there are atheists who avoid taking cheap shots and who love doing that which is good, optimistic and desirable.

http://forums.about.com/n/Pfx/forum.aspx/?tsn=114&nav=messages&webtag=ab...

 

For me, the G reminds me to think about, and META-tate on--that is, think about thinking on the great questions life inspires us to ask. What is the greatest and highest possible Good that is ours to will, choose, learn about, know and do?

 

Every morning as I METATE on the blue of the sky, the golden light of the sun--even on cloudy days--the red magma of the earth, my veins & arteries, and the green of the trees and the grass, I say these simple words: I AM, I KNOW, I DO, I GROW, & IT IS SO, AMEN!

 

D prompts me to ask: what is the most Desirable and creative way for me to go about accepting and using my life--this great and mysterious gift, especially when we get to be mature enough to want to be at one with all that is, and to make the choice to be useful and productive--physically, mentally and spiritually--servants of the highest good.

 

The '?' mark symbolizes the process of bringing these two great concepts--of G to D--together. In other words, from 0 to O, from zero to infinity--from no-thing to everything.

 

It reminds me to keep on thinking about thinking; to be aware that deep down--no matter what our age--it is possible for us to be philosophers (askers of important questions), or scientists (discoverers of new truths), or artists (creators of real beauty). Or even a variety of combinations of same.

 

Oh! And take note of this: Serious philosophers, scientists and artists are now saying that there is no measurable end to space and time--"All things ARE possible." As Jesus said. An eternal NOW in which to explore an infinity of space is not necessarily a figment of the imagination.

 

 

 

Hi Aldo:

 

Yes, science is only one of the means of understanding reality, but it is the most logically or analytically truthful means. But, as you said, even scientific theories, even when proven true, change as new insights arise.

 

As far as logical truth is concerned, only mathematics are absolutely truthful. But pure mathematics proves only itself truthful. To explain meaning is beyond the scope of mathematics or science.

 

Science did shine for us inasmuch as it came up with the proof for an eternal substance—energy—and the existence of a transcendental power or force to transform this substance from one state or form to another.

 

Transcendental energy—this could well be all there is. But transcendental energy is limitlessly creative, so much so that it eventually created sentient organisms self-named Homo sapiens who are smart enough and desirous to explain the meaning of existence.

 

So what is the meaning of existence?

 

If transcendental energy is all there is, and is limitlessly creative, and constantly, actively and dynamically  changing and creating, then the meaning of existence is to create. Then being God's co-creators is the meaning of our existence. That's as far as I got with contemplating the meaning of our existence—so far :-)

 

The words of true poems give you more than poems,

They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behaviours, histories, essays, daily life, and everything else,

They balance ranks, colours, races, creeds, and the sexes,

They do not seek beauty, they are sought,

Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick.

 

They prepare for death, yet they are not the finish, but rather the outset,

They bring none to his or her terminus, or to be content and full,

Whom they take they take into space, to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings,

To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings, and never be quiet again.

 

-from SONG OF THE ANSWERER by Walt Whitman

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arminius

All you say seems sound... But how do we create... What do we create....

Can our creatity be ethereal and beyond grasping in that each thing we create is a new thing , yet since what ever we create is of energy, it is at the same time an eternal thing.

I like to experiment given the following hypothesis:

We can be aware of God, but we can know Christ and know Christ in specific knowable ways. (hmmm... is this thread material?)

My experiments allow me to peer into a particular reality. The results of those experiments in that reality should repeat when ever and where ever, I do them. In theory, others should be able to do those experiments with similar outcomes or results. ("By their fruits shall you know them.")

So far... no faith. Just seeing, hearing and understanding a particular world or reality that I can access and interact with in my daily living.Science reveals, discovers, demonstrates ... does it feed us?

Some can try these specific creations and determine to use them without any leap of faith. They should still bear the fruits of interacting with that reality. Others may leap...

So the method I am proposing to trial, is a means of exploring, discovering and utilizing very much grounded in the 'scientific' approach. Does it provide scientific results? I am thinking yes... As you mentioned in an earlier post, I think we face the same direction in regards to the utilizing of the method of science in our work.

I think this experiential approach is what the purveyors of 'experimental religion' were in search of since the 17th century. But they did not seem to get past 'experiential' language or formulations.

Shifting back onto the thread's track: God processes himself through us. We are a necessary ingredient. In our absence there is no process. God does not evolve, except through us.

(Its all about us (individually and collectively) because God all ready has it all.)

regards

How do we create?

 

I think we create by using the same creative, transformative or transcendental power that is at the root of all creativeness.

 

What do we create?

 

At the moment, I create a dialogue with Aldo. I create a lot of thought, some of which may not have been thought by anyone before, and therefore is uniquely created. I was a farmer for most of my life, and created a beautiful small farm and a bountiful garden. I also am a hobby writer and wrote two books so far. 

 

On the Eve of this year's Spring Equinox it will be 30 years that I had an all-night vision of an unfolding universe. Prior to the vision, I had spent almost the entire winter in contemplation and meditation and the reading of contemplative literature. On the evening before the grand vision, I had a lesser vision of three bubbles of light within a bubble. "Ah, the Holy Trinity!" I thought ecstatically when I came out of that vision. All day this day I had the feeling that there was a greater vision yet to come, and after my evening meditation I earnestly asked Jesus Christ for a revelation of God.   

 

The grand vision that followed began with utter darkness, in which there appeared a bubble of light, and a bubble half the size inside that bubble. The inner bubble then proceeded to multiply in inward quantum leaps, and the outer bubble in outward quantum leaps: An unfolding of three-dimensionally inverse and three-dimensionally outward bubbles and bubble space in the same space. This inverse/outward unfolding of quantum bubbles went on and on, seemingly ad infinitum, but eventually the bubble continuum, or part of it, was ripped into chaos, and out of the chaos evolved the world that we see and are. I describe the vision in one short and dry paragraph, but it actually took six hours and was my most splendid experience ever!

 

This was my experimental approach in "experimental religion." Describing my vision, I am limited to the concepts I know and have created, but, during the experience, I was the experience. Observer and observed, seer and seen, knower and known, object and subject were the same. But there was far more to it than I can say or conceptualize. I'm adding bits and pieces of interpretation as I go through life, it is an ongoing process of interpretation, speculation, and creation. A feeling of unity and unitive love has been with me ever since the experience.

 

I keep urging everyone to seek similar experiences. Alas, few people do.

 

 

To me that's just an out-of-'ere experience that most mortal (limited) beings couldn't accept as a becoming state ... leaving me as one man called me a bit obtuse ... or in another tongue "an ob-I character" ... as bump in the hole-E quantum state of interstitial domains?

 

Sets me into rifts of giggles when some remain stoicly frowning on something they just don't understand ... and refuse to accept as foreign intellect ... a strange soul? Now is that outstanding in your own field? Like a hymn in church this morning that went: "Love that surrounds as understanding" ... sounding more and a'moor like grandmother clause! Like if you don't like it ... love it anyway and maybe ID'll come to mean something ...

 

Learning strange things is a pain yes/no? Some refuse and thus are mortal ... don't get far before recycle or redemption occurs in the recall factor ... when you cross the thin red line and remember all ... even those things that were painful ... would that be heaven or 'elle ... the gentile school marme as laid out? Ain't the rye soul a butte ...

Aldo and Arm, I think you are onto something here. When we stretch our thinking into meta-physical realms we are tapping into Universal Mind, the Mind of God, which is the medium through which the Love of God and the Will of God manifest.

And the po' ole blind mon he ask de sun: "mi chile what dah yah learn out there?"

 

After an insipient bit ... heh peeked out refreshed ... even the infinite must take a periodic dipping to learn the pain of being mortal ...

 

Like a vast muse wandering in the san for 40 years ... is that not just ouda'ere?

Arminius

That is a wonderful account.

A couple of observations that you might ponder...

"...creative, transformative or transend power..." may be a bit nebulous. I expect not too many folks can reach to such nebulae. So despite urging, some try and fewer arrive.

 I reflected on your success as a farmer. Farmers, know what a stern task master nature can be. They may be awed bythe creative power, but in the end they must tend the soil, have seeds that planted the right way. The plants and animals need to be tended the right what. Do things right will at least give them a chance to have a harvest that is brought in at the right time.

How does a farmer create? Yes, by first having a love for nature and its creative energy. But, that farmer must do more than love... So it is with Christians I think. Christiains must to more than know, love and serve God/energy. Like the famer's knowledge, skills, and working, Christians are also constrained to follow in the right way. I think these ways are the Christ-specifics that I reference from time to time. Just as the farmer can teach, coach and support that acquition of farming skills and habits that lead to the harvest, elder Christians can do the same. But, what to do and how...

I am curious to learn what ordinary folk can do in ordinary, everyday ways. I find Christ did not come to work wonders and to astound, but to wash feet and reveal that God exists to serve people.

On a different note, your experience seems life giving, but, was it an experiment? If it is to be an experiment, you should be able to replicate the experiemnt with same outcomes and results. Others should also be able to replicate it with same outcomes and results. This distinguishes experiement from experieince, even from transformative experieinces. I look to find experiemetns in being Christian that can be done by many with the same results of outcomes. Adding sugar to tea, makes it sweet. Everyone, young, old, educated and illiterate can do the experiment and get the same results. I believe we can experiment in/on and discern Christian realities.

I think you right, if people could also have the experience you had, they would also benefit greatly. But, the ages I know them, have allowed for only few to be able to have such experience. Many seek, few find. But everyone, wants to know know what do and how to do it to be "good".

Perhaps there are several roads to salvation and holiness...

All roads lead salvation in the end Aldo. In fact, it's been said that "it is the greatest triumph for the forces of evil on this planet that the religious groups have been allowed to monopolize the concept of spirituality, thus implying that the religious path is the only path to divinity. It is not. To the Masters, the religious path is only one path among many paths to the same divinity. We will have to expand our awareness of what constitutes spirituality. Everything we do — political, economic, religious, social, cultural, scientific — should be, must be, spiritual. It must be based on the good of all the people."


Everything you said above about "farmers and Christians" should apply to "everyone", country-folk or city-folk, religious or non-religious. In the end it is the "good-will" we play out to our neighbours that we will be, that we should be, known for. I believe there to be many of people of good-will in the world, though they may not call themselves Christians. Does it really matter?

neo

yes to what you say... but a consideration

I grow... I do not start fresh every day. Do we, as a community not grow? If so, what does that growth look like... what criteria are to be used?

Arm, have you read anything about

ABOUT INTEGRAL THEORY

A Startling Vision for the 21st Century Church
by Tom Thresher
 

 

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Now, more than ever, the West needs a mature Christianity. One that contributes moral and spiritual guidance to a world facing a multitude of
crises: from terrorism to financial collapse, from poverty to global warming; from oil depletion to incessant war. Why? Because we are by nature spiritual and no solution can suffice without including the spiritual.
 

 

 

However, a spirituality, a religion, enmeshed in literalisms and dogma cannot serve this role. The church can only speak to these crises by offering increasingly expansive perspectives on our lives and the issues of the day. And the religious traditions are best suited to inspire these expanding perspectives because they grew up with humanity and only these traditions have the legitimacy to point beyond themselves.
 

I invite you to imagine church leaders standing side by side with leading scientists, artists, multinational executives and government leaders proffering enlightened perspectives on the issues of the day. Imagine our most visible religious spokespersons not condemning the modern world from atop their backward-pointing magical-mythical pulpits, but pointing forward as respected advisors in matters of the utmost importance.
 

 

Imagine congregations across the country actively challenging Christianity to “grow-up” into its modern and postmodern possibilities and beyond. Imagine a catechism leading the way into increasingly expansive ways of knowing and leading in the world. Now wouldn’t that be a startling vision for the 21st century church?
 

 

Growing up with Humanity

When the bulk of humanity saw the world as magical, our religion was magical. Spirits lived in the trees and forests; animals embodied the earth’s different powers and often were thought of as gods themselves; folks believed that sticking needles in a doll really did hurt the intended victim. When humanity outgrew its magical orientation, religion gave birth to the great myths. In Judaism and Christianity, the great stories of Creation, the Exodus, the flood, Jesus’ birth, and his walking on water, provided a mythological context that matched the mythological understandings of the majority of people.

 

 

 

During the age of empire, Christianity built great temples and exalted royalty to express the emerging power of collective organization and the rule of law. The great religious traditions, and Christianity in particular, down through the ages provided stories, beliefs, practices and explanations that soothed, reassured and generally met the needs of the population as new levels of awareness and understanding emerged.
 

 

 

The Enlightenment changed this. Modern rationality rejected the magical and mythological stories that were the foundation of the church’s authority. Science, art and morality broke away from the church and developed along their own modern and postmodern trajectories leaving Christianity in its childhood. But in denying the importance of our spiritual nature, modernity left no cultural resources to resist the alienation of scientism and consumerism. Ironically (and increasingly obviously), neither science nor the marketplace can solve the problems they have created. Now, seemingly, only the church has the legitimacy to point beyond itself and invite faith into the modern and postmodern world which are starving for its sustenance.
 

 

Progressive Christianity and Beyond
Wonderful things are happening in the progressive Christian movement, and we delight in the renewed vitality inspired by this vision. Yet we feel the need to point beyond even the progressive Christian movement to what we call the Integral Church. Not only does it welcome those who doubt the trappings of the traditional church and gladly receive the wisdom of other faiths, it then integrates both modern doubt and postmodern pluralism with the mythic foundations of our faith. The Integral Church holds all of this simultaneously in a great celebratory dance.
 

 

So imagine, if you will, a church that gives people permission to be exactly where they are on their spiritual journey and simultaneously offers multiple invitations into possibilities just beyond (and sometimes way beyond) their current comfort level. Imagine if this were done with attention to a suitable spectrum of interior capacities, with “Christian stories” appropriate to different stages of the journey, and with a variety of venues for engaging the social, economic and political structures surrounding us. In other words, imagine a church actively inviting the congregation to move through modern awareness into postmodernity and beyond without abandoning its traditional roots. This is the project of the Suquamish Church (United Church of Christ).
 

Stories for the Journey

In this church we offer a spectrum of Christian stories to nurture people on their journeys. For those who want to challenge their conventional beliefs we offer them doubt, and welcome their well reasoned agnosticism and even atheism. Science, evolution, the historical humanity of Jesus, and the social construction of the Bible are all welcomed here.

 

 

Postmodern pluralism is welcomed through “Many Stories….One Community”
wherein we engage, and are changed by, Buddhist, Baha’i, Jewish, and Native American perspectives. This may involve reading the scripture through New Age eyes, exploring different faiths through the Native American medicine wheel, or hearing African American spirituals sung by a Buddhist monk. Our integral story resonates with the Universe Story as developed by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry. Swimme makes the audacious claim that the radical relativism of postmodern deconstruction can be contextualized by the universe as a meta-story. We agree.

 

 

Integral Theory
These different stories are organized by integral theory. Integral theory has a long and illustrious history but has been most clearly developed and articulated by Ken Wilber. Though not popular among theologians, I am empowered by a congregation thirsty for the clarity and purpose it provides.

 

 

A guiding premise of Integral theory is that individuals inhabit qualitatively different orders of consciousness on their spiritual journey and that the introspective, cultural, behavioral and social dimensions of human existence require different modes of thought, different “Christian stories” and different ways of being in and serving the larger community. Let me elaborate.

 

Levels of Development
The most contentious dimension of Integral Theory is that individuals inhabit qualitatively different orders of consciousness on their spiritual journey. Resistance to this notion is well founded as “being conscious” has too often been used as a cudgel to demean others. It is one of the dangers that comes with an otherwise revelatory way of understanding. Fortunately this dimension of Integral Theory is well grounded in rigorous psychological investigation, beginning with Piaget, and is not nearly as linear and rigid as it appears on the surface.

 

The basic idea is straight forward: we each have a “center of gravity” where our sense of self, our identity, resides most of the time. If I have a rational-scientific orientation in the world it simply means that about 50% of the time I see and understand the world through rational lenses.

 

The rest of the time I may variously see through less expansive lenses (like when I am cut off in traffic) or more inclusive lenses (in meditation, listening to music or an inspirational speaker). An order of consciousness is more like a wave than a line, like a normal distribution bulging at my most comfortable way of seeing but including perspectives more or less expansive than my preferred orientation.

 

 

Another aspect of Integral Theory adds marvellous complexity to this developmental picture: multiple intelligences. All of us are better at some things than others. Some are gifted intellectually, others have outstanding ability for compassion, others have physical capacities that are stunning, still others exhibit a righteousness that humbles us.
There are perhaps two dozen identifiable, relatively autonomous, intelligences in all of us. Each of these has its own path of development and each of us will be more developed in some intelligences and less in others.

 

 

Hence, we find individuals with highly developed intellects and low moral development (the classic evil genius); folks with immense compassion and little intellectual or physical capacity (downs syndrome at the extreme); people with great interpersonal skills and little ethical awareness (the stereotypical used car saleman); individuals with amazing physical prowess and egocentric identities (the “bad boy” sport star). The combinations are as infinite as humanity itself.

 

 

The point is that by saying that folks “inhabit qualitatively different orders of consciousness on their spiritual journey” we are making a statement that has general relevance but can never specify or define an individual. Nevertheless, using a developmental continuum of consciousness offers an essential part of an overall map to guide a church that seeks to meet the needs of individuals in the 21st century.
Questions for Completeness
 

 

The second part of my statement “that the introspective, cultural, behavioral and social dimensions of human existence require different modes of thought, different ‘Christian stories’ and different ways of being in and serving the larger community” derives from a taxonomy that permits important questions of completeness to be asked. This taxonomy points to four components of every event that are so fundamental that they are built into the very fabric of our language.

 

 

The first dimension concerns the experience of being me. Very simply, what does it feel like to be me? What it is like inside this body? This mind? Who am I? What is my purpose?
 

This is the first person, “I” dimension. It is explored by the fields of psychology, spirituality, and mysticism

 

The second dimension is we. When you and I interact how do we find mutual understanding? What meanings do we make together? What is the experience of being a “we”? This is the vast arena of culture where, in our collective interaction, we create meaning. These are the cultural stories we tell ourselves to explain the world, give us purpose, and explore an uncertain universe. The disciplines of cultural anthropology, hermeneutics, and theology explore this aspect of our humanness.
 

 

These first two dimensions refer to our subjective experience of being myself and being with others. The third dimension shifts to a third person perspective and asks: if I look at an individual entity from the outside what do I see? If an objective person watched my behavior how would they describe it? This is the empirical realm studied by behavioral psychology in the human arena (or chemistry, biology, and physics in the material world).
 

 

The fourth aspect of our human existence is really an extension of the third. It asks, how do all the individual “its” fit together? Fields of study like sociology, economics, political science and systems theory ask what happens when all the individual actors come together. What does it look like from the outside?
 

 

The value of this [b]taxonomy[/b](classification) does not depend upon the details of its components but finds its relevance in an Integral Church by the questions it demands. If we are to support people on their individual spiritual journeys we must ask what is needed for their personal awakening (the “I” dimension)? What stories will support them if and when they choose to move beyond their current comfort zones (the cultural, “we” aspect)?
 

 

What kinds of behavior can be expected along the path (what does the individual do)? And what kinds of opportunities for service to the community are appropriate at each stop along the way (the social dimension)?

This is a huge task. Its full expression is well beyond the capacity of this small church. Nonetheless, we are beginning, and this is our experience so far.
 

 

 

An Evolving Integral Church Suquamish Church seems an unlikely candidate to become an Integral Church. Located across Puget Sound from Seattle, surrounded by the Suquamish Indian Reservation in a middle to lower income community, one would not expect this rather plain looking church to house such a dynamic and adventurous congregation. But this church has the benefit of being one of the few progressive churches in an otherwise conservative area.

 

As such it is a magnet in the region for those seeking a different way to be faithful. The congregation has a large representation of teaching and healing professionals, predominantly baby boomers from their late 40’s to early 60’s and mostly female. More than 40% hold masters degrees or higher.
 

 

I, as pastor, was called to the church because of my eclectic background (college professor, artist, minister) and unorthodox relationship to Christianity. Increasingly, this community sees itself as “scouts” exploring ways in which the church can serve the spiritual needs of both modern and postmodern “seekers” from its roots in the Christian tradition. We refer to our church culture as one of “permission and possibilities.”
 

 

Two dimensions of this culture stand out. The first combines trust, playfulness and the invitation to fail. If you want to move out of your comfort zone there is no more powerful setting than a non-judgmental, loving community in which to explore spiritual stuff at your edge. In fact, this may be the most important role for the church in American society as no other institution can offer a setting with neither time constraints (it always “God’s time”), nor expectations of achievement.
 

 

This plays out is in a pervasive playfulness. This playfulness spans from our “spontaneous ushering” during worship to a remarkably lighthearted, but profoundly penetrating, challenge of our beliefs in regular classes.
 

 

The second dimension of our culture of “permission and possibilities” is Story. If we are to invite folks to stretch beyond their current way of knowing we must assure them of a landing place; a landing place that feels Christian even if doesn’t look Christian. As mentioned above, we celebrate and explore the Christian story in its traditional, modern, postmodern and integral forms. The opportunities for personal exploration occur primarily in two venues.
 

 

The first we call Transformational Prayer. This program combines the constructive-developmental work of Robert Kegan (How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work) with the inquiry of Byron Katie (Loving What Is) and direct path Zen (“Who am I?”). Over the course of 6 to 8 weeks a group of not more than 10 individuals works through Kegan’s internal languages from complaint to competing commitments to the Big Assumptions that hold us and through which we view the world and act upon it.
 

 

Not only do we devise safe tests of those assumptions we inquire directly into them using Byron Katie’s four questions: is it true? Can you know for certain it is true? How do you react when you hold it as true? How would you be if you could not have that Assumption or thought? Then turn it around.
 

 

Finally, we inquire directly into the very nature of our being by asking who or what am I? While this practice may not sound Christian it nonetheless offers a pathway into the nothingness (Our Father) that is everything (the Christ), or however you want to say it.
 

 

The second opportunity for personal exploration we call TAGS (Talking About God Stuff). It’s quite simple: We watch a video, stop it whenever an interesting point arises, and see where the conversation leads.
 

 

Watching a video means no one has to read anything, so everyone comes prepared. We watch everything from cosmologist Brian Swimme, to mythologist Joseph Campbell, to Zen teachers Adyashanti and Genpo Roshi, to theologians Marcus Borg and John Spong, to spiritual gurus Eckhart Tolle and Gangaji.
Two different groups have met continuously for nearly four years. Our conversations span faith stories, good and evil, the nature of time, free will and much more, all in an atmosphere of play and caring.
 

 

The energy for personal exploration, supported by a spectrum of Christian stories, is expressed in a variety of social activities. While we do not emphasize social engagement as a church body, we do stress that we are helping to build the interior and cultural resources that enable folks to pursue their particular social concerns.

 

 

There are traditional charitable and caring activities (Thanksgiving food baskets, emergency funds for the poor, outreach to the elderly and infirm) as well as modern and postmodern lectures and workshops around such issues as global warming, spiritual values in American politics, and gay and lesbian issues.
It All Comes Together in Worship
 

 

The nascent Integral character of this church is celebrated most clearly in our regular Sunday morning worship. The roots of our Christian heritage are renewed in the consistent and fairly traditional “order of worship”, by the weekly recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, by a regular time for prayers, and by at least one traditional hymn. These roots create a “safe space” for moving beyond tradition.
 

 

This may include a direct challenge to Biblical authority, interpreting scripture through Zen eyes, 60’s rock songs for hymns, a Wicca priestess for Beltane, a contemplative walk into emptiness, meditation on the Aramaic words of Jesus, joint services with other faiths, the outright questioning of all belief, or the burning of pledge cards, all set in an atmosphere of sacred playfulness.
 

 

The Essential Ingredients
What makes all this work? We sometimes refer to it as the “reverence of irreverence”: a combination of humor, a loving playfulness and an expansive meta-story. The point is, this is not serious business! This is play. We don’t have to accomplish anything.
 

 

We don’t have to be rescued. We don’t have to evolve. There is no time frame. We can mess up as much as we want. There is no place to go, no one to save, no sins to be forgiven, no wrongs to be righted (the Kingdom of Heaven is already here!).
The overriding story of this community is that we are loved, no conditions. In second person language, God is out there loving us (gave his only son, etc.); in first person language, the great I AM dances us, each and every one; or in the third person, we are integral to the bio-spiritual universe in its evolution.
 

 

It doesn’t matter how you say it. You don’t even have to believe it. Just try it out. The profound freedom of a community living a story of unconditional love allows us to laugh at ourselves, play with our lives and care deeply about one another. It is the heart of the Integral Church.
Our adventure now is to become more intentional as an Integral Church.
 

 

None of what I described above was directly designed to be integral, but emerged around a leadership that has held an integral vision consistently, but lightly. We have now embarked on a program to adapt Wilber’s vision in Integral Spirituality into both a usable map and a viable curriculum for our church.
 

 

As mentioned, we see ourselves as scouts, charting a path of relevance for Christian faith in the 21st century. If we avoid taking ourselves too seriously we may have much to offer.
 

 

Tom Thresher is pastor of Suquamish United Church of Christ in Suquamish
Washington.   http://suquamishucc.org/

On; The Experiment in Experience:

 

Does not the WORD say test all things? This might be intergral, or just ecclesiastic ... I don't know ... I was taught in church that god's people shouldn't know ...

 

I think it is a nebulous idea ... the Golden Rule in  a place where it mostly goes like this: "success occurs when you look after yourself ... alone!" This is contrary to early Mennonite beliefs ... but that too became corrupted with a sense of stronger powers applied ... wasn't humbled properly into a subtle state ... below the awareness of over emotional populations! Is that confusing? Perhaps a bit of alternate chaos (citii) as compared to the chaos of emotion ... that we'll get over and away from at some point ... that experience is a ru'agh Job, raising warts, boils and blisters as we burn our ecclesiastic selfs in lack of understanding of the integral nature. One should get it all together ... someday not now we are only a prototype of what's to come ... a state of pure thought. Could we become that?

 

Is it an experiemental experience to challenge gods people with god ... the word itself that they don't know very well as they missed the part about understanding alien myths? Once right into dark and mysterious words ... the underlying story starts to grow as myth ... has a recycled aura about it as it goes round!

 

Isn't that just the devil to those as it goes ... in only one way? This could be referred to as mono linguistic ... could it not ... but then I'm usually wrong ... so I'm told ... enough to humble a devil working with dark and mysterious word ... poem mice ole isn't that god once departed ... leaves room for cosmological thought ... way out there ... neigh bull us to those looking in from outside, beyond, or just a mythical position, place, or alien time ... that which is to come with a'rythmn of quantum waves ... light as yet unseen or all that which we don't know?

 

Really puts the binders on those that believe they have IT already in hand as god ... when god is just pure emotion ... something past and classic that leads to philosophy ... the love of wisdom, an knowledge that we are as yet unfamiliar with? There'd be a dunk'n if we caught up to that field of fruit all at once ... an integrating point to be had! Sort of like Davids arrows ... Eros?

 

That's de satyr in the Shadow for yah ... gotta believe in what you don't know and hope you come to understand---Corinthians ... like a colossus or large upstanding thing ... once the core of a cedar stump ... high in the isles of le Ba non, a deflated Ba or a soul without any Eire/air ... a hare-less fellow in Negro myth ... for the rabid was a trickster while getting the carrot from a mule ... in human terms the mule was ignorant for letting this happen ... a pure failure just because Eyore in l've with cute fuzzy things? Is that nebulous too? Generally in hard situations ... emotions get rough'n h'8 full! Brings an end to the emotional experience ... now what? Does logi become hermeneutic ... that is it follws a'post al ihc lye as an exposure ... the coverup vanishes ...

Yes you grow, but, like all of us, you also start fresh every day as you awake to each new day. So does humanity start anew with each new incarnation of "us", as individuals. Humanity grows through us in ever expanding awareness which can be measured in how we treat others, especially the least among us. In a world where 70% of the population still lives in poverty our track record doesn't look good. But things are changing, and I believe we are rapidly "waking up" to the realization that peace cannot happen in a world where war, poverty and exploitation exists. No man or woman is an island and we must see Humanity as a single working whole, it's our only option. This concept of unity and singlemindedness was echoed by the Christ when He gave us the commandment to simply "love one another".

Neo

I am finding some people seem to suggest a unity where everything can be like any other thing. Everything can be sacred .... or the same thing, nothing is sacred. 'Sows' ears can be changed into 'silk purses'. What I was at 18, is as I am now... no growth. In fact, I am more now than then... I have grown spiritually.

Then I ask --- do we collectively grow spiritual?

What does such growth look like? What criteria can be used to know such growth?

The criteria is awareness.

Hi Linds,

 

Happy New Year. Blessings to   you and your beloved.

 

 Do you know that lots of people don't like to read a lot  on computers? Maybe their  puter  print  is too small or they have no time ? Some people need to print out everything to read. I don't understand them.

 

I read all of the long  article you posted to Arm.  That church sounds like a wonderful vibrant place.

 

Here is the link live:

http://suquamishucc.org/

Echart Tollehad a great deal to say about spirituality and hard religion (unmoving portions?) but in many churches we're told not to go there ... could be heresy ... evolution or change! Pick a word that suits yah and research it through the ages ... you might be suprised at the variety of understandings from one tradition of phonetics to another ... like a fleeting phone-çian (alien scion)?

 

Yes that's word that few understand well ... it can speak to something inside you ... blanket misunderstanding as a primal gift? Goph eg Ur!

Hi Aldo;

 

I think mystical experience can and should be replicated.

 

If God is nature, and in nature, and we are nature, then just being nature, or just experiencing nature, should be an experience of God, in other words a mystical experience.

 

So all it takes is simply being. Being what we innately and ultimately are, not being what we think we are. When we discard our entire world of concepts, and simply are, then we experience ultimate Truth. To me, it is as simple as that.

 

We do, of course, create our interpretations of the pure experience. But those are our arbitrarily created interpretations of the experience, not the experience itself.

 

Allow me to quote my favourite philosophical and theological poem. I have qouted it before here on the Café, and I apologize for my repetitiveness to those who have seen it before.

 

 

Getting IT

 

IT is we; we are IT.

We can't comprehend IT without experiencing IT,

But we can experience IT without comprehending IT—

For we are IT!

 

IT reveals everything;

IT explains nothing.

 

The interpretations

Of ITs revelations

Are our creations.

 

What, Eckhart Tollehead? A Freudian slip, eh, WaterBuoy? But you are full of them, aren't you?

 

In German, "mad" is "toll", and a "Tollehead" would be a "madhead".

 

I often thought that our latter day Meister Eckhart deliberately chose his last name, or maybe even his full name. "Eckhart der Tolle" means "Eckhart the Mad".

 

Do you remember Hermann Hess's Steppenwolf? Hesse originally entitled it Nur für Verrückte (For Madmen Only) His publisher, however, refused to publish it under that title. But Hesse got away with subtitling the Treatise About The Steppenwolf, which is a booklet within the book, with For Madmen Only.

 

 

Hi Mike...

 

I enjoyed and appreciated you comments above. Called to mind words I heard Stan McKay. He was speaking to a Cree dilemma. Faced with the prospect of oral culture's demise, the Cree wondered about committing stories, songs and traditions to writing. There was awareness of the problem implicit in committing the oral to writing. The oral depth would be reduced by a textual representation. This risk, was overcome by realization that not taking it implied disappearance of the stories, songs and traditions. So the work of rendering the oral as the textual was adopted. This in the hope that, one day, the written word would disclose the oral content and the oral be liberated.

 

George

  STARDUST, thanks for that link. And it worked. You must have the touch, eh! When I used the same link, it did not work, interesting!

 

Which goes to show: PCs do make mistakes, and produce their own garbage-in errors without help from us, now and then--Which begs the question, do old PCs have "seniors moment" perhaps  .

 

BTW, the article of which you speak was not one that I wrote. It was sent to me by a friend and was that of the writer--the minister of the church mentioned in the link. I simply put it out there to get some feedback. Thanks for yours!

==========================

THE UNITED CHURCH OBSERVER

NB: JANUARY 2014 EDITION  http://ucobserver.org/

This comment is for anyone-- It is totally inclusive of all traditional Believers/Non-believers and even people who are just plain curious--anyone who is interested in the present story of and the future of RELIGION in every Canadian community and in the world, I urge--even mentally goad--you to read The United Church Observer, especially the recent and current issues. If you do, many of you will want to subscribe.

 

One couple I know of has ordered two subscriptions so that husband and wife don't have to "fight" over who gets to read it first. My solution regarding the January issue? I gave my wife the right to read the current issue first, if meanwhile she will allow me tear out page 45/46--with two one-page stories so I could read them slowly. She did. True story, not a joke!

 

The story on page 45 is about: STRETCHING YOUR SPIRITUAL MUSCLES, by Mardi Tindal, a former United Church moderator. Comparing spiritual exercises with physical and mental ones, she writes about how she builds her relationship with, "God, or however you name the 'ground of your being.' "

 

It is understandable, of course, that she immediately reverts to still using the traditional name and proper noun 'God' as her "ground of being (a neo-logism for 'god' first coined by Paul Tillich, when I was a student of theology in the 40s and 50s)".

 

Meanwhile, for most others, especially evidence-demanding atheists and agnostics, the use of the noun, 'God', still brings up the image of a far-off supreme, supernatural and male-like being who created the universe, out of nothing, in six days, already. WOW! Furthermore, He is still the owner and CEO--chief executive Officer and manager of universal operations. Could we test that claim? Please!

 

But Mardi--indicating how open she is to experimenting with new ways of being god-like and doing godly things with god-speed--does close her column with quotes from the writings of Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, who speaks of 'god' as Energy, Spirit ... the voice within us calling us to Life ...  

 

I thank her for the invitation to all of us: Go to ucobserver.org  and "Share your most transformative spiritual practices."

=================

PS: ORTHODOX AND TRADITIONAL BELIEVERS!  Feeling left out?

Please, you don't have to feel this way! I say this as one who believes sincerely and godly in the god-like principle that there can be a god-like kind of UNITY without insisting on god-imposed form of CONFORMITY. Let's have a the win/win kind of dialogue about this issue. IMO, debates about who is right and who is wrong is zero-sum kind of game.

Your comments and questions, please.

=================

FORTY YEARS OF MINISTRY (1953-1993) in 5 churches

Controversies? You bet!

1. Newly ordained at www.mta.ca N.B. My first assignment was from the Newfoundland Conference. The letter read:

You are hereby assigned to go--to Goosebay, Labrador. You will be met at the Military Air Base (July 18, 1953), by the Protestant Chaplain. He is Flight, Lt., the Rev. Phil Ross, a UCC minister. He was a great help to me and Jean, a teacher.

 

There, I helped establish a Union Church--very controversial process. Happy Valley, a nick name, was then a squatters town of 115 families. The full story would make a movie. But things did work out. IT WAS A GREAT EXPERIENCE.

 

Because of it--perhaps with the help of the American base chaplain, a Methodist, I got a 2 year scholarship to Boston University School of Theology--a Methodist university. 

http://www.bu.edu/sth/  --A GREAT EXPERIENCE

THE FOLLOWING ARE NOTES--to which I will add content, later.

Long before I officially retired from ministyr(on Dec. 31, 1993)--from the moment I heard of its conception--I was an avid nurturer of the need for the NEW CURRICULUM and its new ideas. "WOW!" I exclaimed, "Its about time!" Then, from the moment of its birth I welcomed it, sincerely, enthusiastically, lovingly and godly.

 

Meanwhile, I confess that I had the personality type who got a kick out of "shocking" people who loved to hang on to the old ways of believing, thinking and doing things.

 

I loved experimenting with new ways of doing theology (the things we believe in), liturgy (the way we do worship) and polity (the way we do church business).

 

Interestingly, in the churches I served over the decades, most of the church members, adherents and staff, including, board members, associate ministers, music directors and student assistants, with whom I worked along the way--that is, the ones who generally agreed with my, shall we say "unorthodox" way of doing ministry, were supportive.

 

THE LAST CHURCH SERVED? I WAS THERE FOR 27 YEARS.

Like the first churches I served, I did not need to apply,  this last church also invited me to be there.

[HOLD the PHONE......]

Naturally, in one church there were also those who were not supportive. Despite--that is, not withstanding--the reality of the latter, I am happy to report that, because all decisions made and actions were arrived at democratically.

 

By agreeing to disagree lovingly, and agreeably, the majority in any of the five churches I served over the years NEVER had to experience the SAD story of having to go through the bitterness of having a SPLIT in the congregtion.  No staff member was asked to resign, or dismissed by fiat of presbytery.

=================================

In my sincere and god-like opinion, THERE IS NO tiny God--ONE WITH DIMENSIONS and limitations--AS A SEPARATE BEING

I prefer to think of "god as a verb, as an adverb, and as an adjective" [STAY TUNED]

God is an essence ... perhaps negative energy ... perhaps positive depending on what side of abba'd chi gets out of in the don'n of a new Deiz ... this could be interpreted as protonaic or eclectic ... a shifting nature that is integral but not separated from the whole thing and thus confusing to those that take god as an isolated power that they alone control out there while I remain internalized ...

 

So the story goes as it floes as fluid and non rigid ... like many real religions that lack softer hearts! Of course if you're determined to win you have to put up a hard face ...

 

Is that crazy or just a mad head ARM?

 

This could take a toll on the head chi'z as chi lies down and laughs her innards out ... providing a hollow tube for carob edels ... things that bug yah in high alttudes!

 

But hoo'd gnoe if they were all in an overly emotional state ... that disturbs the process of thought and cognizance on at least one level. Are there mono levels elsewhere ... like in a German bundt cake ... a light chocolate delight to be budha'd about ... as dark and good?

 

Alas in a religion in which knowledge, wisdom and intellect is diminished alongside emotions as primary ... how would we know anything little more everything? It is enough to create a giggling daemon ... that odd soulnd I hear in church Sunday morning ... I never knew where it came from ... then I was told not to ... ignore it for such intelligence isn't real ... the intellect is out of here ... mad people are too emotional to talk to themselves sensibly! You can ramble on to crowds though ... as hey won't pay any attention to alien things ... could cause an evolution in church like a bright white man in a dark social order like Semites!

 

Maybe he is justa page ... like history turning in a whirl ... another aleif of I't ... the self in the crossing?

 

Thanks for the link, stardust. And thank you, Linds, for the post.

 

We've discussed the integral life, integral theory, the integral value system, and integral spirituality before, here on the Café, with Rishi, and when we discussed the book "The emerging Church" by Bruce Sanguin, and particularly the "Spiral Dynamics."

 

The Spiral Dynamics nicely illustrate the interconnectedness of all cultural institutions, and how they evolve. Much of religion, for instance, is still implicated in the medieval, authoritarian stage, while its leading edge has jumped ahead into a post modern stage and beyond. The resulting pathology threatens to tear the church apart, but not when one realizes that, from an evolutionary perspective, each level or stage on the evolutionary spiral plays a vital role, and is as valid as every other stage. And one can't leapfrog! One can't skip a stage simply because each stage is foundational for the next one, and each new stage transcends but includes the previous one: Development trough envelopment. Thus, when one is at the leading edge of the spiral, one cares for the entire spiral, and realizes that every individual or institution advances up the spiral at their own pace, and the thing to do is not to remain stuck but advance or progress up the spiral.

 

More about Integral Life Practices at  www.integralinstitute.org

 

 

 

 

WB, you mean, like in autism? Are you autistic?

 

1. Is that crazy or just a mad head ARM? ...

 

2.  I hear in church Sunday morning ...

 

3.... mad people are too emotional to talk to themselves, sensibly!

 

4... like history turning in a whirl ... the self in the crossing?

========================

 

1. Arm, how say you?

2. Tell us about your church experience

3. Tell us what you mean when you speak of "mad people" being "too emotional to talk to themselves, sensibly!"

4. Clarify, this:  like history turning in a whirl ... the self in the crossing?

=============

WB, you speak of: God is an essence ... perhaps negative energy ... perhaps positive.

Are thinking of The BIG Bang? --the BB.

Perhaps we can call the BB, the Great & Glorious, Omni-Dazzlement--the source of light and heat, which are absolutely essential to life on earth and wherever it exists in the universe.

 

 

Well I was laughing at you guys talking about Ekhart Tolle. I have his books.

 

I just found a new book of his with cartoons about pets. It seems to me he's telling us "to go to the dogs" and all will be well. "Thinking like a dog"  is enlightenment he says. I'm joking but he makes me laugh so hard. I wonder if the years have taken their toll on him......:)..

 

 

If I start to think like a dog, maybe I'll  even start to bark like one ...woof...woof... they'll put me away in an old folks home. Whatever.... he didn't draw  the cartoons but they surely look like him.

 

 

I can't find out about his lifestyle i.e. what does he do all day when he's on the loose, not  busy giving seminars or tickling Oprah Winfrey. ( I think he lives alone, once married)

 

.

Eckhart's Book of Pets

 

62 slides of dogs and cat cartoons

 

I read Steppenwolf, but it must've been over 30 years ago. Around the same time I read Siddartha and James Joyce's The Dubliners. I can't remember Steppenwolf at all though..

Talking heads are indeed mad ...

 

Especially when in the presence of Kings and other noble essence in which case you are told to be silent and still ... for the entitled elite don't wish to know what common folk really know. This is collective conscience that is regected by many powers ... which we don't know whether they are upright or down! This is due to corrupt fabrications ... and you'd be crazy to point out errors in powerful sorts ... they do believe theya re infallable! This leads to greater un-learning ... imagine they think me a bit off! It does create great cover tho' ...

 

Then they do say it would be good to be aware of the collective spirit ... so much BS like Dr. Seuss who was a sacred underground Christian ... few know that as he was very shy and didn't confess to it as he had to live with a'theists and agnostics that didn't know that to be true or Toby Truth which is black as writ? Thus the ridiculous commentary on the tree and the failed forest that people could now see wasn't there ... virtually unseen! It is enough to warp a desire into a chaotic fabrication ... like the wind of god as a small voice lost amounst the uproar of in lightened elle ... jay Zue  was there with the devil ... trying to get the tribes working on thought patterns ... these showed up in Navaho Lands as San Drawings ... an arid expression ...

How do I know this? I don't it is just this in-wired feeling ... probably illegal as it goes against what real people know ... and you know what that amounts to ... leaves me in an imaginary state ... a physcologist aquaintance said that was his greatest mystery: "where catatonic people go that seems to relax eM like a good rest of just change of venue (alteration)!

 

They're probably right out of this place too ... a wise move if you really look closely at where we're at ... but we're told not to ... there are people will tell you how, when, where, and why you're here and no what or who tuit/toute ... so it is really nothing!

 

Hi stardust:

 

Yes, I agree with our latter-day Meister Eckhart: Thinking like a dog is enlightenment.

 

This, of course, is because dogs don't think the way we humans do. They don't conceptualise reality, and therefore don't confuse their concepts with the real reality, which is God. They just live the real reality, and therefore are enlightened.

 

Unfortunately, dogs can't conceptualise their state of enlightenment, and therefore can't be as conceptually or analytically aware of it as we humans can or could be. Our ability to conceptualise, or to think creatively, can put us either at or beneath or above the level of dogs.

 

In some Zen sects, there are test questions called koans. They are supposed to test one's level of enlightenment. One koan frequently quoted in the West is: "Does the dog have a Buddha nature?"

 

Of course, a dog has the Buddha nature, but saying this to the Zen Master as an intellectual conclusion is not sufficient. The answer to a koan has to be intuitive and spontaneous. Barking or growling like a dog, biting the master in the leg, or even lifting a leg and peeing against the nearest object would be a better answer than an intellectual one. But we overly intellectual Westerners are permitted an intellectual answer—provided that we have the intuitive understanding as well!

 

And, in order to gain the intuitive understanding, we have to lower ourselves to the level of a dog, and just experience (God). Wow, wow!

 

 

Hi Linds:

 

What, you are asking me to clarify WB's enigmatic sentences?

 

I can't, but I can speak for myself.

 

To me, God is creative energy, and it takes both negative and positive energy for energy to be creative. That's why God polarised energy, and plays the polar opposites against and with each other in a limitlessly creative game.

 

That's God, in a nutshell, by a cosmic nut.

 

 

 

"What, you are asking me to clarify WB's enigmatic sentences?

 

I can't, but I can speak for myself."  ARM

======================================

No ARM,  I wasn't asking you. Hoping to get some clarity, with less enigma, from WBuoy, I just pulled these comments from what he wrote and I just happened to see your name in the first comment: As you can see, WB said 1. Is that crazy or just a mad head ARM? ... The other comments to WB, by me, were:

2. Tell us about your church experience.

3. Tell us what you mean when you speak of "mad people" being "too emotional to talk to themselves, sensibly!"

4. Clarify, this:  like history turning in a whirl ... the self in the crossing?

===============

Now, I will would like to ask WBuoy: I have a few questions about your love of, is it  "secrecy?" Would you like to have a dialogue about this here, or in WonderMail? Or would you rather remain silent? The choice is yours.

 

 

 

 

I read once, re how dogs think, 'imagine yourself sitting in a busy sidewalk cafe in Paris, and you're reading a book. You find yourself reading the same page over and over again, because while you know you just read that page, for the life of you, you just can't remember what you just read. So you go back and read the page over again. Dogs never go back, because they don't have the awareness or the wherewithal to even think to go back'.


Sorry for the thread derailment, carry on.

My dog's relationship with newspapers was even less cerebral.

 

Ha, ha, ha, should've seen that one comin'.

Dogs know there another hydra ante in the future, so in the condition Ur-in ... hold that thought for bit! It might ferme up ... the end or close of another chapter in Snoopy's Life ---Charlie Brown! That dog had a huge basement tho' ... even if he did live in the dog hoes (used to be hollowed out den)!

 

All cartoonists have a sacred character to represent themselves ... as they wouldn't bare the code of their own self ... that would be rye humur (tares?). All others would die laughing ... well not all ... some would be really pas't ... piscine mad? Many heads would be lost ... consequence of the red lass thingy!

 

I was mad once when my mother zoan (aberrition of goan which's Hindi spirit under the tree that encourages black code; that's as writ). Anyway my mother said I was just something with my dogged curiosity "about self" that was an ithchi subject to her ... but just a simple IHC to Arminious. I'm still fascinated how she made something of it (synthesis?) when so many people tell me I'm nothing like a dark formless void ... a hollow deck in which to put a lot of data? In a realm of peoples that don't wish to know much is that foreign intelligence? The Shadow moves ... is fluid ... regardless of how cloudy it is overhead aD infinitum and they just can't see through me! Is this good or bad given the state we're in; supposedly buffaloed by authorities?

 

Did you know that in some places an experimental teaching program is in place to extract handwritting from the system? This is so when computer systems fail we will really be dumb ... achieving the church father's dreams: "these common foks shouldn't know!" It is coming to that ... so be careful about what you desire or you could be overwhelmed by that knowledge or lack thereof that is encouraged by rampant desires! Beyond that ho'gnoes ... who knows? I did say the "g" could be substituted by "c" or "k" in transmutation of linguistic traditions ... leading to light of the sole entity ... and thus reflection for egolocation! Some think it is only for Ba tz ... dark things in the night looking for belle freeze, one kohl daemon in the shadows who escaped her father's business sense as heh tried to sell Ur off as pure matter ... he never considered she had a mind of her own ... thus defining avarice. Oops I guess Idid that afore ... on the "mind over matter" concern! Was certainly an out-there-thought considering our present attutde towards wisdom.

 

Psalm 139:23, 24 --- that defines the searching nature of emotion's* maddening considering what love does to the self, causing loss of intelligence. That can break down some tollheads in the aftermath ... what came to be know by some as hermeneutics so the others would know the ridiculous code that is spun out in religion. One really has to know the word to unravel the code ... and you know what church believes about thought and knowledge ... leads to self hatred and those of us beyond that suffer RIFTS of giggles ... as long as the body doesn't know we can remain A'B'D or as some fey spirits in the abbà ... a mire linguistic shift that few will know. And thus I remain un-descernable as my mother initially stated! True to her beliefs ... she really didn't wish to know ...

• * Can an essence like emotions have possessive form? Don't be ridiculous now; follow the rues and ignore the circumstances ... be true to the book and the letter of the law! But who knows the understanding of letters? This be men of letters who have interest in small things. Poweful men walk all over them and thus they become deformed ... once known as redacted!

 

Alien thoughts are just the devil to those people (who despise moving thoughts and evolving beliefs) considering what the authorities on fixed matters did to movers like Copernichus and Gallileo. When will they learn that history as writ is  not the way to do it ... but soometimes the "way not to do it" or in alien code you could say this is not the way it is when they say it is (as its being)! Thus it quickly become something else ... like me (my mother said) and you should see what she did to my father ... it was a hopeless mess ... a devilish or divine enigma ... the answer is in the details! Some say this is god some say the devil ... many cannot synchronize their mind to this varient ... thus remaining OEM'rs! Some say Homers as IT deep-ends on phonetics and gluttural stop (leads to consonants as a tongue-lashing event).

 

The local minister said my parents should 've remained firm in their vows contrary to the bible that says make no vows ... as mere men can't keep them in the face of great emotions that sometimes cause gross scenes of satyr that those that don't wish to ... won't understand. This is why god provided a varianble code and called it "hehself" that later became known as a real etem, or edem, dependant upon which liguistic tradition you follow that could confuse the whole flow ... and thus the dark formless quantum state we're in ... so what's out there can see if we can figure the way out. It all reamins dark and unssen to thsoe without occult skills and dealing with mind ... a psychic activity to say least! This leaves some still out and thus the expression OBI which indicates how things appear when observed from outside ... a farce ID Heinseinberg treatus! My mother would say get out of here ... but then she didn't know many strange things ... contrary to her thought patterens and re-inforced by religious stoics, stones in her background? Hard to move eh!

 

Such is a fatale attraction to say least as once the core falls to gravid states ... only the soul and spirit escape as mere ghosts of the primary point ... which mortals easily forget, deny, or displace as they didn't wish to know (that myth as writ in black and white). Thus dis-emmanating behaviour of the base th'rds if they don't know the other deuce and the collective portion ... that's the alien devil that will have anything and everything to do with subtle thoughts and underlying beliefs. This is because in an overly assertive dimension stray thoughts will raise ires and people get mad heads ... take a tolle on everybody as the self as Annä etem is like meme ... same space just different perspective! There are small portions that escape as damned spots ... those wee populations out there ... wind blow bo'suns ... carried aloft by Shadows of terror created on earth! it is a stirring thing that goes round ... sometime observed as quanta of black spots ... Pixels or Pix ease? These were said to be afore Celts ... as the grits came together and thence know as mere dirt  ...

 

If you don't know a pile a's Torahs ... you coouldn't construct a myth of mind ... a non-thing said to be primarily imaginary matter ... as conjured or conjecture ... take your Pix. This is modern neuroscience that has great respect for the autonomus, as well as symathy and parasympathy fro depressed stated that are subtle ... once known as the' Nus in tha past as you could get trapped in that state if you couldn't see the humur in wisdom of Proverbs 1:8 ... now isn't that just an alien daemon of a thing to say as if it has no matter tuit? Mind you ... tread lightly about IT and carry a big stick cross ways ... so you won't sink too far in ... then you too would be a devilish thinker from the depths of what isn't! Sob eit as we wait witt bated breaths ... just about busting ...

If god had a sense of humour would that be satyr-like ... when contained satyr-Urnine as a clay Jared thing with a message? Sort of in qui to those that didn't wish to know, like an deep well?

 

Such are the pits of humur ... what the ß'rits once called dark spirits and tried to erase all humour in common folk ... seriously! They believed this to be the domain of noble essence ... enough to fill Midas with chimerii sensations ... and a glimmer of hope of getting out of the situation as fast as possible ... as that stuff just won't digest as the old aboriginal Black Swan stated: "when will paleface know that once everything is gone the gold prophet is hard to eat!" Maybe I paraphrased that to allow for the law of redaction and all that evolves from Luçe change ... Lucrecean Koine?

 

One devil of an ambiguity ... how word speaks to me ... multi face-sous-lye or the truth of onanism and owning up to what we are emotional and greedy population as a collective sense. This is not recognized and thus creates a huge unconscious idealism ... like a numb mind all on its own! Such is the way we are born here ... with nothing but intuition ... but strong men deny such activity that's unseen ... mostly because the bible said that god's children didn't wish to know ... and they follow this idealism blindly!