The "Unholy Trinity of the False Self:"

- I am what I do
- I am how much I do
- I am how well I do

-Michael Hryniuk, in Growing Souls: Experiments in Contemplative Youth Ministry, Mark Yaconelli.

"A friend of mine attended a Christian pastor's conference in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. The participants, gathered from across North America, included one Native American pastor who was on is first trip to a major metropolitan city. During a lunch break the Native American pastor took a walk outside with one of his colleagues. As they stretched their legs along the busy sidewalk, the pastor suddenly stopped, turned to his companion and said, 'Do you hear that?' the friend paused and considered the bustling noise of the city. 'Hear what?' he replied.

"Planted along the downtown sidewalk was a small row of tress. At the base of each tree was a circle of flowers. The pastor walked over to one of the trees, knelt down, reached beneath one of the floral clusters, then stood and opened his hand, revealing a small black bug. 'It's a cricket.'

"Dumbfounded, his friend replied, 'How could you possibly hear that?' The Native American pastor reached into his pants pocket, took out a handful of coins, and threw them into the air. As the coins hit the cement, people from all directions stopped and looked down. The pastor turned to his companion and said, 'It depends on what you're listening for.'

"In the New Testament Jesus identifies his followers not as those who hold orthodox beliefs or embody moral purity. Jesus says his followers are those who have 'ears to hear' (Mark. 4:23) -those who walk with heads tilted, straining to hear the voice of the 'good shepherd' (John 10:14). Jesus claims that those who know how to listen will one day hear the voice of the Beloved and will overcome death (John 5:25).

"Sadly, the Christian church is losing its capacity to listen. we forget what it means to sit still, to be silent, and to wait until we hear the voice of the One who calls us by name. We're losing our capacity to be surprised and amazed by what we hear. We've become a church more responsive to the predictable clinking sounds of the marketplace than the surprising still, small voice of God. Instead of heeding the call to 'be still before the Lord, and wait patiently,' we 'fret' and worry and 'plot' (Psalm 37). Driven by our own fearful voices we run ahead of grace, frantically seeking a plan, a strategy, a formula for securing a Christian life. A culture that no longer listens to God becomes increasingly noisy. Every idea must be exploited, every insight publicized, every sermon downloaded, every passing thought blogged and posted. We live in a time when everyone is talking at once -a time when the truth isn't hidden, but drowned out in a sea of irrelevance."

-(Mark Yaconelli (2007), Growing Souls: Experiments in Contemplative Youth Ministry. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, p 17-18)

While this book is directed to American-Evangelicals (primarily), I see within the Episcopal Church, which has much more of a tradition of contemplative worship and Daily Prayer, that we too have been so distracted by the "marketplace" of ideas and ideologies that overwhelm not only our ability to listen to one another, but to listen to the still, small voice - to sense and feel the thrilling of God's voice.

[The Rector said...] "Here is a book. It is so much paper, pasteboard, cloth, and ink. Yet it brings from one mind a value to thousands of minds. It is sacramental, an outward and visible sign of inward value. A book may make you cry or laugh. Really it is the author who does so. The book is the effective means of conveying truth from the mind of the author to the reader.

"So with our food. A few acres of land will sustain a man's life. How? Does he eat the earth? No! But he prepares it and plants wheat. He gathers the wheat, grinds it into flour, bakes bread and eats the bread. The loaf has gathered up the chemical elements in the earth and air and sunlight, and conveys them to man to sustain his life. The loaf is a sacrament: it is the outward token of invisible values.

"God's grace toward man, His love toward man, are universal. But He has established certain ways by which men may be assured of God's favor. Jesus Christ ordained the Sacrament of Baptism by which men are incorporated into His Kingdom.

"Jesus Christ died for men. That men might receive the value of His life and death. He instituted the Sacrament of the Holy Communion.

"The consecrated bread and wine are made the very sacraments of the value created for men by the death of Christ on the Cross, and they are the very means by which the power and efficacy of His body broken and His blood shed are conveyed to each individual soul.

"Of course, he who receives them must receive them with a heart prepared to accept them for what they are. There is no magic in them. The individual must be prepared to welcome Christ, His power and love, into his life. The Bread and Wine then become the food for the soul, by which we become partakers of Christ's most blessed Body and Blood.

"Then the sacrament, instead of being an unusual and exceptional method," said the Doctor, "is merely the most natural method, having a counterpart in every process by which life is upbuilt."

"That is quit true," answered the Rector. "The exceptional element is not the method, that is, the charging of bread and wine with some further function, but the exceptional thing is the nature of the value that is conveyed by them. Christ instituted this method and pledged His word that in the Holy Communion there should be the value created by His death on the Cross for men."

[The Episcopal Church: Its Message for Men of Today, George Parkin Atwater; New York: Morehourse-Gorham Co., 1950; 85-87.]

On Facebook, I posted this working theses:

In the coming decades, society will look more pre-Constantinian than post. The majority unchurched population will not be intrigued by or drawn to the Gospel if all they see in Christians is a reflection of current culture, liberal or conservative. To be a people in the imago Dei, Christians will need... to recognize our distinct "otherness" in our formation. What does that mean? How will it be done?

A former seminary mate of mine responded: "It's like Michele's friend said: if you want to know if a person is a Christian, ask their neighbor. "

I absolutely agree, but... The problem in our current situation is that common, disinterested people are not particularly impressed with the lives of their neighbors who claim to be "Christians." (see "unChristian" for examples). What has to change at very fundamental levels within our churches and our individual lives that will causes us to be more reflective of Christ rather than culture?

The Gospel of Christ and the consequent life He calls us to is are profoundly disturbing and counter cultural. Are we too embarrassed or afraid, in the arrogate, to take on such a life? Are we to enamored with mammon? Are we too deceived? Too lazy? What???? These, of course, are questions that have been bantered around since the beginning, but what do they mean in our contexts and in our time?

Many people - Christians, non-Christians, Atheists, and the like - assert that the Christian holiday of Christmas was stolen by early Christians from a pagan holiday and that early Christians made to be their own in order to promote their new religion.

No so, according to William J. Tighe, then Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His refutation of the Christmas-pagan myth appeared in Touchstone magazine, December 2003, entitled, "Calculating Christmas."

Calculating Christmas

William J. Tighe on the Story Behind December 25

Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance.

A Mistake

The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.

In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.

Read the rest here...

Here is a synopsis of the article by Tighe:

Continue reading "Christmas is a stolen Pagan Holiday..." »

This quote from, Looking for God in Harry Potter (second edition), by John Granger (yes, Granger):

"'He understood at last what Dumbledore had bent trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledoor knew - and so do I, thought Harry with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents - that there was all the difference in the world.' (Rowling, Half-Blood Prince, 512)

"If the reader wants to believe in an existential fatalism, something like Harry sitting at the window staring into the darkness and doubting the arrival of his deliverance, rather than in mortal virtue and heroic choice of the good, that reader is fighting the tide of Rowling's message. The human heart thrills in resonance to Harry's heroic decisions - decisions made (until Dumbledore's revelations at the end of Order of the Phoenix) without knowledge of his destiny. Readers around the world share his programming, it seems, to the tune of more than 300 million copies [as of the publishing date of 2006] of Harry's stories being sold. If this is only a matter of programming, there seems a prevalent programming in the human person for sacrificial, altruistic, loving service that loyalty to the local gene pool does not explain. Why do we thrill to Harry's choices if they're just a function of his being the boy born to be 'kind?' (see http://www.mugglenet.com/jkinterview.shtml)

"The answer to this question brings us to the Christian meaning of choice and change in Harry Potter. Harry, it turns out, has a larger-than-life destiny (vanquish Voldemort; save the world). But he can only realize this destiny by making the right choices and becoming the sort of person - an embodiment of love, the power the Dark Lord knows not - able to defeat the Dark Lord."

Consider the influences these books have had and will have on a generation?

Joshua Jameshttp://www.joshuajames.tv/ target="_blank

I first learned that song in 1990 while doing campus ministry with Studenten für Christus in Germany. Es klingt auf Deutsch besser, ich denke. (Someone mentioned it in Facebook and it got me thinking about it... memories!)

Herr, das Licht Deiner Liebe leuchtet auf,
strahlt inmitten der Finsternis für uns auf.
Jesus, Du Licht der Welt sende uns Dein Licht.
Mach uns frei durch die Wahrheit, die jetzt anbricht.
Sei mein Licht, sei mein Licht!

Jesus, Dein Licht
füll dies Land mit des Vaters Ehre.
Komm Heil`ger Geist,
setz die Herzen in Brand!
Fließ Gnadenstrom,
überflute dies Land mit Liebe!
Sende Dein Wort,
Herr, Dein Licht strahle auf.

Herr, voll Ehrfurcht komm`ich zu Deinem Thron,
aus dem Dunkel ins Licht des Gottessohns.
Durch Dein Blut kann ich nun vor Dir stehen.
Prüf mich, Herr, laß mein Dunkel vergehen.,
sei mein Licht, sei mein Licht!

Jesus, Dein Licht
füll dies Land mit des Vaters Ehre.
Komm Heil`ger Geist,
setz die Herzen in Brand!
Fließ Gnadenstrom,
überflute dies Land mit Liebe!
Sende Dein Wort,
Herr, Dein Licht strahle auf.

Schau`n wir, König, zu Deinem Glanze auf,
dann strahlt Dein Bild auf unserm Antlitz auf.
Du hast Gnade um Gnade gegeben.
Dich widerspiegelnd erzähl`unser Leben
von Deinem Licht, von Deinem Licht!

Jesus, Dein Licht
füll dies Land mit des Vaters Ehre.
Komm Heil`ger Geist,
setz die Herzen in Brand!
Fließ Gnadenstrom,
überflute dies Land mit Liebe!
Sende Dein Wort,
Herr, Dein Licht strahle auf.

Originaltitel: Shine Jesus Shine
Deutsch: Manfred Schmidt

The beginning of the year 2010... 2010 years in the designation of time that began with the life and death (and resurrection) of a Nazarene. (If the claim of resurrection was made then, I doubt time would have been designated different then the current method.) In these days of global plurality, it is often called CE or the "Common Era." A.D. or "anno domini," "the year of our Lord," has fallen out of favor.

With the coming of each new year, there is a kind of optimism (hopefully) that the days ahead will be better than the days behind. I certainly feel this way. Sometimes, I know that the coming year will yield some very different experiences and outcomes - I will be changed. This is one of those years.

I will be changed through the experiences of the coming months, and I'm honestly excited to see how I've changed by this time next year. This is my last week at CPG. With the coming of next week, I take up my new position as Diocesan Missioner for the Red Hook Project and ImagoDei. What all that means, I have no clue at this point. I will be responsible for making it mean something and doing something that will benefit the cause of Christ in the Diocese of Long Island. I've nervous. I'm excited. I'm afraid. I'm expectant.

I will not be the same person I am right now at the beginning of 2011. By the grace of God, I will be more of the kind of person I was created to be, more able to love honestly, less hypocritical, more humble in my understanding of myself and the world around me, wiser to the ways of the Systems of this World and the Kingdom of God, and having a good and beneficial influence on those in my life - to be more fully the imago Dei to those around me. This is my hope.

Because we are called to love one another, we seek to learn from the wisdom and the experiences of God of those who have come before us over the past two millennia.

Because we are called to love one another, we strive to be formed as God intends in order to pass on this wisdom and these experiences to those who will come after us.

The foundation for the developing Rule of Life for the ImagoDei Society and the Red Hook Project.

"... I believe in the Holy Catholic Church: The Communion of Saints: The Forgiveness of Sins: The Resurrection of the Body: and The Life everlasting. Amen."

"I am not sure that I understand all that it means," said the Doctor.

"Possibly not at the first reading," agreed the Rector, "for there are several phrases here whose meaning is not quite apparent. A little patient study, however, will make them plain. I always explain these phrases to those who enter my confirmation classes.

"You must understand, Doctor," continued the Rector, "that this Creed is centuries old. It is the collective judgment of the Christian Church as to the fundamental facts. It is as much a corporate expression of the whole Church as it is a personal expression. An individual might not understand all the bearings of these facts. He would scarcely be expected to believe the Creed as the independent conclusions of his own thinking. He might never have discovered some of these facts by himself. The heart of the Creed is this. First, that God is the Father: that Jesus Christ is His Son and was born into this world and died for men; and that the Holy Spirit of God is now active and present to bring men into relation with God. If all that you feel about God and Christ is toward these conclusions, then you may, with real integrity, say you believe facts of the Apostle's Creed. No man can do more than believe toward this great expression of fundamental Christianity."

"But it does not explain anything," urged the Doctor.

"It does not. But it is an expression of allegiance toward God and Christ. The teaching Church instructs the attentive mind. But this teaching, as I said, imposes no obligation except as all truth demands credence by its very nature. What I mean is that in the Episcopal Church you do not commit yourself beforehand to a body of doctrine which prevents your own thinking. The Creed does not restrain your liberty of thought, but enlarges it by giving you some basis of fact upon which thought may exercise itself. You have complete intellectual freedom in the Church.

Continue reading "The Apostles Creed (pp. 76-81 )" »

Metric w/ front Emily Haines

Over at "Sarx," the author details 10 points and asks us to "Discuss." I think they are very well written concerning what is the basis, the foundation, the essential (whatever word is best) for our Christian experience. I might use a different word than "icons," only because of the Eastern understanding of them, but I get the point... and it is a good point.

Read all 10 here.

Fr. Mike Kinman, on Facebook, wrote the following. We are all using copious amounts of Purell these days. I'm sure GoJo (based in my old town of Akron, OH) is pleased, even if, as Mike mentions in the blessing, we are initiating some sort of super-virus.

Holy God, creator of all things in heaven and on earth, we give you thanks for the gift of this Purell, for ethyl alcohol, it’s active ingredient and for Isopropyl Myristate, Tocopheryl Acetate, Aminoethl Proponal and other inactive ingredients whose purpose is known only to you and in files that cannot be released by the Food and Drug Administration until 2079. We humbly ask that your love and care for all creation not extend to the microbes we hope to eradicate through our sometimes fanatical and paranoid cleansing and that you guard and protect us from all superviruses we might be unleashing on the world through the same. We also beg your protection and indemnification for ourselves, Johnson and Johnson, Gojo industries and all other subsidiaries from liability and physical or spiritual damage from the use of this sanitizer. Finally, may the chemical cleansing of our hands be a an outward and visible sign of the cleansing of our hearts, and may the pungent and alcohol-laden scent waft heavenward as incense in your presence. In the name of your son, Jesus Christ, who, like Purell, comes as fire and burns away all that is not worthy of surviving in your presence.

Let the church say … AMEN.

Someone pointed out to me that she was offended by a comment I had written a while back. It came from something I wrote that dealt with the rise of promiscuity and how she interpreted my comments - that I asserted that the fault lay at the feet of women.

I want to make a clarification in case others may have interpreted what I wrote in the same way. I don't know whether I simply wrote that piece badly or whether she misinterpreted what I wrote, either way I need to clarify.

First of all, just to be clear, I in no way believe that women are separately at fault for the rise of promiscuity! Promiscuity and infidelity have been the domain of men for as long as men have been around, to our shame. As Christians, neither are esteemed as positive or appropriate behaviors or attributes.

Women had a part to play with the rise of promiscuity and infidelity, of course - it takes two to tango, after all. What I think I tried to assert before was that the female contribution to the rise came out of what I consider to be a mistaken assumption or tactic of the woman's liberation movement of the 1960's and 1970's - that for women to have equality with men, they had to take upon themselves male attributes rather than demanding that men acknowledge, respect, value, and esteem unique attributes that women can bring to the table. For women to be equal, it seemed, they had to become like men. So, as the thinking might go, since women thought that to be equal they had to become like men, they too often took upon themselves the worst of male attributes.

Or, something like that.

From Facebook, a former fellow seminarian commenting on a post by another former seminarian.

"Two strings walk into a bar, bartender says I don't serves strings here, they leave. One ties himself up and messes up his hair, walks back into the bar and says, Give me a beer. Bartender says, Hey aren't you one of those strings I threw out of here. The strings says, I'm a frayed knot."

I just cracked up!

This guy, Richard Morrison, of the Times (UK) puts it all into perspective very well in his commentary, entitled, "Nothing but sex please, we’re vicars . . ."

His concluding paragraph (I recommend reading the whole thing!):

The tragedy for the Church is that it is missing a huge opportunity. There are millions of young people out there who are disaffected from mainstream politics but equally dissatisfied with the mindless consumerism and callous selfishness of modern life. You can see that from the numbers flocking to espouse green causes, or to work for charities this Christmas. With so many youngsters thinking deeply about what’s right and wrong for the world, this should be a golden age for Christianity — the most revolutionary of religions. But while the Church renders itself a laughing-stock over sex, it hasn’t got a hope of converting the young. At the moment some leading clerics come across as befrocked weirdos with one-track minds. And I’m not talking about their belief in God.

We can't help ourselves, can we? Liberals or conservatives, our collective pathology just won't let us compromise and resolve our differences in ways that show forth the very different Way of Christ.

Here's the thing... we read the reactions to Canon Glasspool's election from around the world that are pretty much just the same opinions repeated from those for and those against. Maybe I'm just perceiving things wrongly, but show me the proof that we are actually making things better for those with the most to lose. ...Show me the something different that actually works to resolve and heal
and that looks much more like the Gospel rather than socio-politics. The distrustful world yawns and stays away while we keep doing the same things again and again. But, I'm surely wrong, right?

Thinking Anglicans gives a good overview of what the chattering classes and the declaring classes have to say.

"The printed prayers are no less sincere, then?" asked the Doctor.

"Not necessarily so," replied the Rector. "Any prayer may be insincere. Sincerity is not in the prayer whether written or spoken, but in the heart of him who utters it. You may be quite as lacking in the spirit of worship in merely listening to a prayer as in reading it. It depends upon an inner condition that is quite apart from the method

"Some men have the gift of prayer; others have not. There is no greater burden placed upon a minister than to utter before a congregation a prayer that really carries upward the hearts and minds of the people."

"But do the written prayers accomplish that?" asked the Doctor.

"They at least enlist every particle of the spiritual energy of the people," said the Rector. "They make the act of prayer a positive act of the person, rather than a mere act of attention. And more than that, they cover every need, every aspiration, every sorrow, every hope of human life. Every person who attends church comes with his particular burden, his especial need. The prayers range over every phase of spiritual experience. They bring comfort to the sorrowing, hope to the burdened, courage to the tempted, joy to the despondent, and forgiveness to the penitent. Everyone who comes to Church with sincerity finds in the prayers some message to his own soul. The congregation in Church is like a group of voyagers on an ocean liner. Each is going on a different errand, for a different purpose, animated by a different motive. Yet for a time they share the same great pathway of an ocean voyage and mould their varied purposes into one great experience. Our services are like that. For a time all sorts and conditions of men share a great spiritual voyage in the service, in which each finds something which blends with his individual purpose. The prayers are so sublime, so free from any but the highest sanctions, so full of the needs of our common human nature, so complete in their religious expression, that no one need seek help there and not find it.

"Moreover...

Continue reading "The Prayer Book and Public Worship (pp. 42-46)" »

There is a very good post from Mark Harris, member of Executive Council of The Episcopal Church, on his blog PRELUDIUM, entitled, "Moving from corporate governance to incorporated governance."

Is the change they perceive/believe taking place really the change that is actually happening? I disagree with Fr. Harris, I think. I posted a response on his blog, and it is below -------

This is a good post, but I want to detail some thoughts that keep rolling through my mind as I read more and more stuff from the generation currently in power. I will say from the beginning that I could be absolultely wrong, so your responses are requested and welcomed. I'm sincere in this and don't want to come across as accusatory or demeaning, even though I will probably sound like it.

To start, I read and hear again and again from Gen X/Y'ers that Baby Boomers keep insisting that they understand, but they absolutely do not - they don't listen.

What I hear in this post is the insistence that there is a move afoot from an Episcopal form of governance to what might be closer to some form of egalitarian or "congregationalist" governance seated in the Executive Council. And that the justifications for such a change are being formed by the Baby Boomers in power as if coming out of what they perceive to be going on within the younger generations (notions of "Networked Societies," being an example).

It also sounds to me too much like the Baby Boomer imperative of opposition to whatever currently is and the inclination to tear it down in order to rebuild it into their own image regardless of the consequences. I think this is a generational inclination that comes near to being an obsession.

I think that many Baby Boomers assume they understand the inclinations of later Gen X and Y'ers in their Postmodern thinking and being. It seems to me that this is often more about the taking of Gen X/Y, Postmodern sensibilities and trying to find a way to force them into hipper forms of justification for "Age of Aquarius," Modernist sensibilities. Do Baby Boomers really understand? When I hear Gen X/Y'ers who are away from Baby Boomers, they say, "No!."

I wonder whether for too many Baby Boomers, the idea of taking off the rose colored glasses warn by their generation to honestly understand Postmodernism or the younger generations' sensibilities and way of dealing with the world and one another can occur. I don't know.

This is an issue, I think, for Baby Boomers. Postmodernism is the way of thinking and understanding for later generations. Baby Boomers may well understand this objectively, but perhaps not subjectively. It is very difficult for anyone to jump out of their fundamental formational model of conceiving (enculturation). So, Baby Boomers make connections between aspects of Postmodernism and their "Age of Aquarius" notions too often wrongly. This may be more than simply the common differences experienced between generations.

Postmoderns are certainly living into "Networked Societies" and do not respond to authority in the same way as do Moderns, but Baby Boomers in their anti-establishmentarianism and rejection of the strong informing force of times past seem to insist that this means there is justification in the usurpation of power from established norms.

The problem is that Baby Boomers are now "the Man," and later generations are rebelling in their own way against them and their way of thinking - which includes the strange sense of egalitarianism that results in the pulling down of anything they don't like. How about younger generations actually preferring traditional language, liturgy, music, and architecture?

The war between the "Conservatives" and the "Progressives" in TEC, as an example, is really a battle between people of a generation. Most Postmoderns I know think it is a lot of ridiculous they way you all are acting that results in the tearing apart of TEC and traditional Anglican sensibilities. That's just what I hear.

Executive Council may well take upon itself new powers and new authorities not specifically granted to it, but what is described here as a glorious happening is not really a Postmodern reaction, but a very generationally specific Modernist one.