Glorified Wounds

 Jesus is the Lord who came to save us by dying for us on the cross. The wounds in Jesus' glorified body remind us of the way in which we are saved. But they also remind us that our own wounds are much more than roadblocks on our way to God. They show us our own unique way to follow the suffering Christ, and they are destined to become glorified in our resurrected life. Just as Jesus was identified by his wounds, so are we. (Henri Nouwen)

The Hand and Feet of Jesus

 Jesus' hands and feet were not just anyone's hands and feet, but the signs of his real bodily presence. They were the hands and feet of Jesus marked with the wounds of his crucifixion. It is of great spiritual importance that Jesus made himself known to his disciples by showing them his wounded body. The resurrection has not taken his wounds away but, rather, they had become part of his glory. They had become glorified wounds. (Henri Nouwen)

Freedom

 After the Western ideal of unlimited freedom, after the Marxist concept of freedom as acceptance of the yoke of necessity—here is the true Christian definition of freedom. Freedom is self-restriction! Restriction of the self for the sake of others! (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

Do You Really Want God? (Quote)

From Inward/Outward

"Do you really want to live your lives, every moment of your lives in God's Presence? Do you long for God, crave God? Do you sing and dance within yourselves, as you glory in God's love? Have you set yourselves to be God's, and only God's, walking every moment in holy obedience? I know I am talking like an old-time evangelist. But I can't help that, nor dare I restrain myself and get prim and conventional. We have too long been prim and restrained.

 "The fires of the love of God, of our love toward God and God's love toward us, are very hot."Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength." Do we really do it? Is love steadfastly directed toward God, in our minds, all day long? Do we live in the steady peace of God, a peace down at the very depths of our souls, where all strain is gone and God is already victor over the world, already victor over our weaknesses?

 "This life, this abiding, enduring peace that never fails, this serene power and unhurried conquest--inward conquest over ourselves, outward conquest over the world--is meant to be ours. It is life that is freed from strain and anxiety and hurry, for something of the Cosmic Patience of God becomes ours." (Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion)

Immanence of God's Presence (Quote)

"The importance of the teaching of the Incarnation is that this mystery of God in his eternal creativity is not only brought closer to us but is really united to us. We no longer need to objectify the mystery that has taken up dwelling in our hearts of flesh. We now know that our awakening to his reality is an imminent possibility for each of us because the awakening is an incarnate encounter. The joyfulness to which this feast should recall us is that this awakening is not the result of our own inadequate resources. It is not our own power or wisdom that leads us but his love that is present as the light of the supreme reality in our hearts." (John Main)

Hermeneutics: Simultaneously Receiving and Creating Meaning

"...meaning is by nature alive to, and structuring of, the present, something we discover to have preceded us at the same time as we collaborate in its creation." (James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, p. 1.)

Life, Boredom and Ritual

Ron Rolheiser

Following on from a recent post that included comments about why a little boredom is not necessarily a bad thing, see Ron Rolheiser here on staying away from those who expect excitement all the time.

Restless Hearts (Quote)

'Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, O Lord.' Surely, St. Augustine spoke the truth. For he too knew that lust and greed could consume one's very existence, filling one's life with supposedly all that one could wish for but somehow still leaving an echoing, gnawing emptiness within the core of one's being. This emptiness is our hunger for God, for someone or something greater than ourselves, who transcends our everyday world and carries us beyond that world, enabling us to have hope. (Diana L. Hayes)

Meditation (Quote)

Meditation is . . . about stillness. It is like the stillness of a pool of water. The distractions that we have when we begin to meditate are only ripples and currents and eddies that disturb the water. But as you begin to meditate, and stillness comes over you, the depth of the water becomes clearer and clearer in the stillness. The experience of meditation, the experience to which each of us is summoned and of which all of us are capable, is to discover that depth within us which is like a deep pool of water, water of an infinite depth. (John Main)

Temptation (Quote)

"The greatest human temptation is to settle for too little." Thomas Merton.

Avoiding the Call of Jesus

For those who complain about missionary Christianity's claims vis-a-vis other relgions see this. Here is the crunch.

 "What is thus stated in the form of a general rejection of all particularity in favor of a vision of universal validity is, when more deeply seen, more particular and more negative; namely, a specific pattern of avoidance of the particular claims of Christian loyalty in its continuing risk and uncertainty."

Life is a Gift (Quote)

"...we don’t get to make our lives up. We get to receive our lives as gifts. The story that says we should have no story except the story we chose ... is a lie. To be human is to learn that we don’t get to make up our lives because we’re creatures ... Christian discipleship is about learning to receive our lives as gifts without regret.” (Stanley Hauerwas)

Peace (Quote)

"Peace is not stasis; it is not the absence of violence: where there is isolation, separation and indifference between peoples, conflict can break out at any time. Nor is it simply civility and respect for the law, in which the walls of separation remain firm.

Peace, rather, is the counter-dynamic to competition, rivalry and the clash of strengths. Peace can only come when the chain of violence is broken and the weaker members of society are fully welcomed, loved and respected."
Jean Vanier

Rowan Williams on Augustine (Quote)

Undoing some cheap and easy criticisms of Augustine from Rowan Williams. I cut this from Ship of Fools...

What everyone remembers, of course, is the things you got wrong – or the things we're quite sure you got wrong.

How you painted yourself into a corner over predestination, God deciding before all time who was to go to heaven and who not. And women; we get very indignant that you had difficulty believing that women were really in God's image as much as men. We forget that this is what you did believe, and how difficult it was for you to square this with what everyone else in your age thought.

And we blame you for messing up Christian attitudes to sex, because for you it was an area of humiliation and tragedy – forgetting, again, that you truly thought sex between husband and wife had something of heaven in it.

We look for a scapegoat to explain why Western Christianity and Western civilization are so much of a mess. You wrote such a lot and so powerfully that I'm afraid you're a very good candidate for the position. But I think you would have turned around and challenged us: why the passion for a scapegoat? What are you refusing to look at in yourself?

In the City of God you explained the mechanisms: we're not sure in ourselves what we really love and value; we invest all our expectations in people and solutions inside this world, and they let us down cruelly. We feel restless and insubstantial because we don't know how and what to love. So we give ourselves a false solidity by pushing the darkness, the doubt and evil out there, projecting it onto some other person, some other group.

We get our solid identity from denying our own poverty and incompleteness. When I was teaching students about the City of God, I felt I really began to understand the Cold War.

So we can't learn to love unless we let go of the longing for solid, fixed identity. We start to grow up not when we become independent, but when we recognize that we shall always need the words and actions of others to give us life – and when we face that fact without resentment or shame.

Behind it all is the recognition that the only reason there is anything at all is the pure act of generosity that creates the world – it doesn't have to be there, God doesn't have to make it, but he wants his joy shared. When we know that, we know ourselves – not by introspection, because I shall always lie to myself about my motives, but by looking to the love that made me and remakes me.

Not a scapegoat, then, but someone who's taught me what I hope is the right kind of scepticism about myself and the world of power around me – and the right kind of trust in my maker.

Addicted to Anxiety (Quote)

"Most of us have half-a-dozen or so favorite anxieties, like bitter sweets we suck on endlessly. We would be frightened to be deprived of them. Jesus challenges us to go beyond the fear of letting go of anxiety, the fear we have of peace itself." Laurence Freeman

Theology Begins When ... (Quote)

Theology begins with an unwillingness to believe that the reality of human beings and human society can be fully explained solely in material terms. Its agenda and subject matter is the exploration of how an openness to a different or fuller explanation of those realities is best articulated and an exploration of how the consequences of such openness bear upon individuals and society, their beliefs, the axioms and principles of social conduct and responsibility. Theology in the specific sense of God-talk is a particular subset of that exploration — the theistic premise regarded as the most appropriate starting point to construct a positive alternative to the purely materialistic explanation of what is — though the openness in many cases will include an openness to the possibility that the theistic premise is itself wrong or misleading’. (Jimmy Dunn)

I pulled this quote from Jason's blog again. He cut this from an interview with Dunn. For links to other great figures in theology check out the full post.

The Hollowness Within (Quote)

That hollowness we sometimes feel is not a sign of something gone wrong. It is the holy of holies inside of us, the uncluttered throne room of the Lord our God. Nothing on earth can fill it, but that does not stop us from trying. Whenever we start feeling too empty inside, we stick our pacifiers into our mouths and suck for all we are worth. They do not nourish us, but at least they plug the hole. Barbara Brown Taylor

The Messy Life and Soul (Quote)

Our search for God and our service to others will never be conducted in a neat world. Life will never submit to our good intentions, will never fall in line, will never stand still long enough to do our bidding.

Life will never cease to be a messy affair, and our spiritual journey will never be reduced to a tidying-up operation. God and the others don’t wait to enter our life until we have put it all in order. Our journey … is about finding God and serving others in the midst of the mess. The messiest place of all will be our own soul, our own life, which, despite our best efforts, will insist on remaining human. And it is into this mess, this confusion, that God and others will invite themselves. John Kirvan

I lifted this great quote from Per Crucem ad Lucem which is from Anthony Robinson here on why 'family' is not a great self-designation for a church.

‘Many of the congregations that claim “We’re a family,” lose sight of larger transformative purposes and settle, instead, for the comfort and satisfaction of their members. The core purpose of a congregation – growing people of faith and helping people and communities move from despair to hope – gives way to lesser and even contrary purposes like keeping people happy. While it may not be a necessary outcome of the use of the family image, many congregations that gravitate towards it seem to make member comfort and satisfaction their de facto purpose.

That may be because “family” suggests to people something like, “We’re all loving and nice here.” That in turn often means no hard questions are asked and no honest challenges are allowed. It wouldn’t be nice.

I can think of other reasons to be cautious about “family” as our image for church. Families sometimes keep secrets that shouldn’t be kept in order to keep from bringing shame on the family name. And families aren’t typically that easy to join. Two of our sons were married in recent years. Turns out that putting families together is a fairly complex dance.

One last issue. The use of the term “family,” may communicate to people who are not married or to the married without children that they don’t quite fit. “Our church is a family,” morphs into “our church is for families.”

Keeping the family members happy, having everyone know everyone else and get along like “a happy family,” isn’t really the point for Christian congregations. Their goal and purpose is both different and higher.

Perhaps other biblical images like “People of God,” “Creation of the Holy Spirit,” or “Body of Christ” are better ecclesiological images? It’s not that these images don’t also have potential pitfalls. It is the case, however, that unlike “family” they are uncommon enough that people seldom have their own set ideas about what they mean. In some congregations, I hear leaders address the congregation simply as “church.” That too seems promising, reminding the gathered community that they are the Church of Jesus Christ (and the building is not).

If we must use “family,” we should be aware of the way that Jesus, while using “family,” also subverts conventional understandings of family and challenges their usual boundaries with a thoroughly new vision of “family.”’

Real Love Waits (Quote)

Only real love waits while we journey through grief. That is the real trustworthiness between people. In all the epics, in all the stories that have lasted through many lifetimes, it is always the same truth: love must wait for wounds to heal. It is this waiting that we must do for each other, not with a sense of mercy, or in judgment, but as if forgiveness were a rendezvous. How many are willing to wait for another in this way? Very few. (Anne Michael)