Happy birthday ...
This may be too long, but today's meditation from Father Rohr had "me" on it so loud I'm copy and paste, and it's scroll down for anyone who wants to read it. Yesterday afternoon I had the same feeling as two or three gathered under our new outside pavilion, that this was as much the church as all the people inside Sunday morning.
Meantime for Monday morning.
My mother was born 106 years ago today, in Bluff Springs, Florida, north of Pensacola out Highway 29 past Cantonment, almost to the Alabama line. When mama was small, her parents, Walter and Mamie Gentry, moved the family to Pensacola, where she grew up on Strong Street in East Hill. About 1915, the house directly across came for sale, her parents bought it, and mama remembered family and neighbors helping move furniture, clothing on hangars and belongings across the street to the house where my mother, her two brothers and two sisters grew up.
The house was recently totally renovated, for which I was thankful, seeing it had deteriorated to where I feared it might be demolished. But even the steep steps, from the kitchen door out to where were parked the wonderful Chrysler cars I knew all my growing up years, are still there,
a handrail added. Memories go back all my years, and I guess you never stop missing your mother.
But Sunday! It was an almost magical spring morning and mine was the only car driving along Beach Drive and looking at the Bay as I headed to church yesterday at 6:30 a.m., car windows open, Mario Lanza singing somewhere in the back of my mind as I thought about being 17 and 18 and ...
did you, do you ever, do that, go there, where two roads diverged in a yellow wood? A spring morning may bring it on - -
But what I was contemplating uneasily on the way to church Sunday morning was my incomplete thoughts about yesterday's TGBC reading, Luke's soteriology, Luke's soteriology as laid on Paul and Silas in Acts, and Paul's own soteriology as Paul himself develops it in his letters. And, to be honest, my soteriology, as well as that of some religions including what has developed in various elements of the Christian church, some of which, seems to me, somewhat, even unconsciously fear-based wishful thinking.
Islamic martyrs going straight to paradise of numerous virgin girls, each of whom presumably is in her own individual hell? Could there be a more selfish choice than killing other humans so as to achieve such a personal expectation?
Luke has already revealed his soteriology when he quotes Jesus saying to the repentant thief, "verily I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43). Paul's soteriology, which may evolve as he experiences the Second Coming not so imminent as he expected, involved bringing gentile pagans into the "faith of Jesus Christ," that is to say, belief in the one true God of Israel the Creator of all things, such that when the trumpet sounds to signal Jesus returning to establish and rule over the kingdom of God on earth, those so "saved" would be included in the new kingdom event (until then, the dead in Christ would sleep in Jesus, waiting to be summoned).
Reading thus far into Acts with TGBC, the jailer asking "What must I do to be saved?" and Luke's Paul and Silas answering, "Believe on the Lord Jesus" instead of Paul's own (at least sometime and in the genitive), "the faith of the Lord Jesus," I am not sure what soteriology Luke has in mind for Paul and Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, et al, as they travel about preaching the gospel, but I expect it's Luke's own. Anyway, by the time I arrived at church and finished preparing for adult Sunday school, my mind was bonkers. My soteriology might best be phrased as "watchful waiting."
Yesterday a lovely spring day, including that a dear friend-unto-brother came over in the afternoon with bricks from the house Linda's parents built about 1949 or 1950 that she grew up in, and where we started dating late 1952. A blog for another day.
Here's from Richard Rohr:
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Nineteen: Community
Church as Living Organism
Monday, May 7, 2018
The Apostle Paul’s teaching is deeply incarnational, yet this has often not been recognized. Paul sees that the Gospel message must have concrete embodiment, which he calls “churches.” Jesus’ first vision of church is so simple we miss it: “two or three gathered in my name” (Matthew 18:20), “and I am with you” (which is just as strong a statement of presence as in the bread and wine of communion). This is surely why Jesus insists that the message be communicated not by the lone evangelist but sends the disciples out “two by two” (Mark 6:7). The individual alone is not a fitting communicator of the core message, and I am not either. (I am blessed to be part of a supportive Franciscan community that gives me the structural and financial freedom to teach and write. Through editing and technology, the Center for Action and Contemplation fully brings my messages to readers and listeners. I certainly could not do it alone!)
During Paul’s lifetime, the Christian church was not yet an institution or a centrally organized set of common practices and beliefs. It was a living organism that communicated the Gospel primarily through relationships. This fits with Paul’s understanding of Christ as what we might call an energy field, a set of relationships inside of which we can live with integrity. Today’s support or recovery groups are good examples of these relationships.
Paul’s brilliant metaphor for this living, organic, concrete embodiment is “the Body of Christ”: “Just as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit, because all those parts make up a single body, so it is with Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). At the heart of this body, providing the energy that enlivens the whole community, although each in different ways, is “the love of God that has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5).
This Spirit is itself the foundational energy of the universe, the Ground of All Being, described in the first lines of the Bible (Genesis 1:2). Union is not just spiritual poetry, but the very concrete work of God. It is how God makes love to what God created. Paul writes that it is precisely “in your togetherness that you are Christ’s Body” (1 Corinthians 12:27, JB). By remaining—against all trials and resistance—inside this luminous web of relationship, this vibrational state of love, we experience a very honest and healthy notion of salvation. If you are trying to do it alone and apart, it is not salvation at all, but very well disguised self-interest.
Paul’s communities are his audiovisual aids that he can point to inside of a debauched empire (where human dignity was never upheld as inherent), to give credibility to his message. To people who asked, “Why should we believe there’s a new or different life possible?” Paul could say, “Look at these people. They’re different. This is a different social order.” In Christ, “there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28, JB). This is not just a religious idea, but a socioeconomic message that began to change the world—and still can.
For Jesus, such teachings as forgiveness, healing, and justice work are the only real evidence of a new and shared life. If we do not see this happening in churches and spiritual communities (but merely the conducting of worship services or meditation sits), religion is “all in the head” and largely an illusion. Peacemaking, forgiveness, and reconciliation are not some kind of ticket to heaven later. They are the price of peoplehood—the signature of heaven—now.
______________
Gateway to Presence:
If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.
Adapted from Richard Rohr: Essential Teachings on Love, ed. Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Orbis Books: 2018), 103-104.
Meantime for Monday morning.
My mother was born 106 years ago today, in Bluff Springs, Florida, north of Pensacola out Highway 29 past Cantonment, almost to the Alabama line. When mama was small, her parents, Walter and Mamie Gentry, moved the family to Pensacola, where she grew up on Strong Street in East Hill. About 1915, the house directly across came for sale, her parents bought it, and mama remembered family and neighbors helping move furniture, clothing on hangars and belongings across the street to the house where my mother, her two brothers and two sisters grew up.
The house was recently totally renovated, for which I was thankful, seeing it had deteriorated to where I feared it might be demolished. But even the steep steps, from the kitchen door out to where were parked the wonderful Chrysler cars I knew all my growing up years, are still there,
a handrail added. Memories go back all my years, and I guess you never stop missing your mother.
But Sunday! It was an almost magical spring morning and mine was the only car driving along Beach Drive and looking at the Bay as I headed to church yesterday at 6:30 a.m., car windows open, Mario Lanza singing somewhere in the back of my mind as I thought about being 17 and 18 and ...
Golden days, in the sunshine of a happy youth
Golden days, full of gaiety and full of truth
In our hearts we remember them all else above
Golden days, days of youth and love
Golden days, full of gaiety and full of truth
In our hearts we remember them all else above
Golden days, days of youth and love
How we laughed with the joy that only love can bring
Looking back through memory's eyes
We will know life has nothing sweeter than its springtime
Golden days, when we're young
Golden days
Looking back through memory's eyes
We will know life has nothing sweeter than its springtime
Golden days, when we're young
Golden days
did you, do you ever, do that, go there, where two roads diverged in a yellow wood? A spring morning may bring it on - -
But what I was contemplating uneasily on the way to church Sunday morning was my incomplete thoughts about yesterday's TGBC reading, Luke's soteriology, Luke's soteriology as laid on Paul and Silas in Acts, and Paul's own soteriology as Paul himself develops it in his letters. And, to be honest, my soteriology, as well as that of some religions including what has developed in various elements of the Christian church, some of which, seems to me, somewhat, even unconsciously fear-based wishful thinking.
Islamic martyrs going straight to paradise of numerous virgin girls, each of whom presumably is in her own individual hell? Could there be a more selfish choice than killing other humans so as to achieve such a personal expectation?
Luke has already revealed his soteriology when he quotes Jesus saying to the repentant thief, "verily I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43). Paul's soteriology, which may evolve as he experiences the Second Coming not so imminent as he expected, involved bringing gentile pagans into the "faith of Jesus Christ," that is to say, belief in the one true God of Israel the Creator of all things, such that when the trumpet sounds to signal Jesus returning to establish and rule over the kingdom of God on earth, those so "saved" would be included in the new kingdom event (until then, the dead in Christ would sleep in Jesus, waiting to be summoned).
Reading thus far into Acts with TGBC, the jailer asking "What must I do to be saved?" and Luke's Paul and Silas answering, "Believe on the Lord Jesus" instead of Paul's own (at least sometime and in the genitive), "the faith of the Lord Jesus," I am not sure what soteriology Luke has in mind for Paul and Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, et al, as they travel about preaching the gospel, but I expect it's Luke's own. Anyway, by the time I arrived at church and finished preparing for adult Sunday school, my mind was bonkers. My soteriology might best be phrased as "watchful waiting."
Yesterday a lovely spring day, including that a dear friend-unto-brother came over in the afternoon with bricks from the house Linda's parents built about 1949 or 1950 that she grew up in, and where we started dating late 1952. A blog for another day.
Here's from Richard Rohr:
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Nineteen: Community
Church as Living Organism
Monday, May 7, 2018
The Apostle Paul’s teaching is deeply incarnational, yet this has often not been recognized. Paul sees that the Gospel message must have concrete embodiment, which he calls “churches.” Jesus’ first vision of church is so simple we miss it: “two or three gathered in my name” (Matthew 18:20), “and I am with you” (which is just as strong a statement of presence as in the bread and wine of communion). This is surely why Jesus insists that the message be communicated not by the lone evangelist but sends the disciples out “two by two” (Mark 6:7). The individual alone is not a fitting communicator of the core message, and I am not either. (I am blessed to be part of a supportive Franciscan community that gives me the structural and financial freedom to teach and write. Through editing and technology, the Center for Action and Contemplation fully brings my messages to readers and listeners. I certainly could not do it alone!)
During Paul’s lifetime, the Christian church was not yet an institution or a centrally organized set of common practices and beliefs. It was a living organism that communicated the Gospel primarily through relationships. This fits with Paul’s understanding of Christ as what we might call an energy field, a set of relationships inside of which we can live with integrity. Today’s support or recovery groups are good examples of these relationships.
Paul’s brilliant metaphor for this living, organic, concrete embodiment is “the Body of Christ”: “Just as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit, because all those parts make up a single body, so it is with Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). At the heart of this body, providing the energy that enlivens the whole community, although each in different ways, is “the love of God that has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5).
This Spirit is itself the foundational energy of the universe, the Ground of All Being, described in the first lines of the Bible (Genesis 1:2). Union is not just spiritual poetry, but the very concrete work of God. It is how God makes love to what God created. Paul writes that it is precisely “in your togetherness that you are Christ’s Body” (1 Corinthians 12:27, JB). By remaining—against all trials and resistance—inside this luminous web of relationship, this vibrational state of love, we experience a very honest and healthy notion of salvation. If you are trying to do it alone and apart, it is not salvation at all, but very well disguised self-interest.
Paul’s communities are his audiovisual aids that he can point to inside of a debauched empire (where human dignity was never upheld as inherent), to give credibility to his message. To people who asked, “Why should we believe there’s a new or different life possible?” Paul could say, “Look at these people. They’re different. This is a different social order.” In Christ, “there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28, JB). This is not just a religious idea, but a socioeconomic message that began to change the world—and still can.
For Jesus, such teachings as forgiveness, healing, and justice work are the only real evidence of a new and shared life. If we do not see this happening in churches and spiritual communities (but merely the conducting of worship services or meditation sits), religion is “all in the head” and largely an illusion. Peacemaking, forgiveness, and reconciliation are not some kind of ticket to heaven later. They are the price of peoplehood—the signature of heaven—now.
______________
Gateway to Presence:
If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.
Adapted from Richard Rohr: Essential Teachings on Love, ed. Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Orbis Books: 2018), 103-104.