THOUGHTS FOR WEEK OF OCTOBER 8

Oct. 8-Sunday-Ps.19 is a great hymn on creation. What does creation tell you about God? How does silent creation speak (v.2-4)? Why do you think the psalm then moves to looking at God’s teaching/torah?

Monday-God is the living flame within each of us. We each contain a spark of the divine, a holy fire that leads us to greater love.  Sometimes our inner fires seem to die, to fizzle out.  At these times we are often overworked, overcommitted, or undernourished by the things that bring our soul alive."--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD

Tuesday-"All traditions went out of their way to emphasize that any idea we had of God bore no absolute relationship to the reality itself, which went beyond it. Our notion of a personal God is one symbolic way of speaking about the divine, but it cannot contain the far more elusive reality. Most would agree with the Greek Orthodox that any statement about God had to have two characteristics. It must be paradoxical, to remind us that God cannot be contained in a neat, coherent system of thought; and it must be apophatic, that is, it should lead us to a moment of silent awe or wonder, because when we are speaking of the reality of God we are at the end of what words or thoughts can usefully do." (Spiral Staircase, p. 292)

Wednesday-We experience the viriditas in our souls, which Hildegard counseled. In that safe space of being met by other pilgrims who also have a love of contemplative practice and creative expression, we are able to start to drop down to a deeper place and let a part of ourselves come alive that we may keep hidden in daily life. We can welcome in the moistening of our souls. This is the greening power of God at work. We find ourselves vital, fertile, alive and saying yes in new ways, affirmed by our fellow companions. Abbey of the Arts

Thursday-Practice simplicity first. When we find this simplicity, they believed, we find true life.”

--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD  

Friday We can only keep it together when we believe that God holds us together. We can only win our lives when we remain faithful to the truth that every little part of us, yes, every hair, is completely safe in the divine embrace of our Lord. To say it differently: when we keep living a spiritual life, we have nothing to be afraid of. Source: Bread for the Journey

Saturday-Philip Britts-In the face of the strain of tasks beyond our strength, we must turn inwards to the source of strength. If we measure our human strength against the work we see immediately ahead, we shall feel hopeless, and if we tackle it in that strength we shall be frustrated…and fall either into torpor or exasperation. There is no healthier lesson we can learn than our own limitations, provided this is accompanied by the resignation of our own strength, and reliance on the strength of God.

Sermon Notes-Oct. 8 Ex. 20, PHIL 3:4, MT. 21:33

Oct 8-In History of the World., Mel Brooks has Moses come down with 15 commandments, but he drops one of the tablets and announces these 10, 10 commandments.Ps. 19, creation and science and telos/goa/endpoint-It seems an odd combination-the order of the heavens and the order of God’s instruction, God’s blueprint for human life. God is a god of order, of arrangement, of aligning life. We can adopt the sheer beauty of nature, but we hear this wordless voice encoded in science as well. We have untangled the blueprint of life in DNA. We have probed the atom; we can see our brains respond in different ways to stimuli, even religious ones in reward centers. Over time, religion has a hand in sculpting our brains over time..God as creator will not give up on this creation.God forgives. God redeems our faults, mistakes, and missteps.We treat the first tablet shabbily. Other than the coveting prohibition, the second tablet is part of being a proper human being;nothing out of the ordinary.We do not honor the Sabbath. We treat god;s name  as an expletive or even worse as useless. We construct ersatz divinities all of the time, our of celebrities, and our own ideas and fantasies.

Human life is of two tablets: god and neighbor. Jesus is of two tablets: the human and the divine. Love god; love the neighbor. Respect God; treat the neighbor with respect.

Phil 3:4b-14,citizenship in heaven-I don't think he means that we no longer have status and concern here on earth-allegiance may be  his concern-as way to deal with first tablet of 10C-are we aliens here or is dual citizenship- rights and responsibilities-seek the common good- I tis one thing to be a citizen or a slave or an alien, or  an american citizen, but to be a citizen of heaven, of God's own commonwealth (see3:30)that transforms body of humiliation , goal of destruction to a life worth living.Eastman-In practical terms, this means that we are not only  our past or our memories.  From the standpoint of the grace of God in Christ, Paul  is no longer defined only by that history, because only God provides full identity papers, a passport for travel.

Paul's life  is not primarily about him. It's about God... Jesus Christ is the threshold where our past and our future meet. Jesus is the one who nullifies the power of our own history and liberates us for a new future.  Christ himself makes us righteous and thereby brings us into the life-giving presence of God. When Paul yearns to "be found in" Christ, he is responding to the self-giving love of Christ who was "found in human form" (2:7).

Finally, Paul uses the image of a race to describe the Christian life.Maybe the 10C can be called the starting line. We are on the move;the runner  keeps her "eyes on the prize" will stay on track. Similarly, the runner who mistakes the halfway marker for the goal and stops there, saying "I made it!" will drop out of the race. Paul says that he has not "already reached the goal" (3:12). The phrase is literally, "have already become perfect or mature."  Paradoxically, "mature thinking" means recognizing that we're not yet mature! We're not yet perfect, and if we think we are, we are deceiving ourselves. Rather, we are always in the midst of the race, carried forward from the past to the future in union with Christ.How can one be a whole person. Where do you find the capacity to go on? Christ is our companion.

Column on Early Principia college

As I noted previously, a group of men meet here at 10 AM on Mondays. This fall, they are seeing how other religions can teach us about our own faith. Upriver, Principia College is a jewel on the bluffs over Elsah. It is the only college in the country based on the religious thought Of Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science. We have a treasure  in our midst, but one we pass by with a bare glance on the way to music of Grafton, or the fine Pere Marquette Park. (I have yet to bring myself to pronounce pere as peer). Mind over matter is a phrase from Christina Science. I would wonder if our current emphasis on perception and reality has its roots in Christian Science’s cultural impact. Christian Science works with Paul’s admonition to “be transformed by the renewal of your minds.”

It started as an elementary and secondary school based on Christina Science principles. Mary Kimball Morgan started homeschooling her own children, but it developed into a school based on Christina Science principles toward educational reform. “Right thinking leads to successful living.” It became a junior college and plans were drawn up to expand into the only college based on the principles of Mary Baker Eddy. They found that their fine St Louis site would have a new road constructing “right through the center of the proposed chapel.” The Depression was starting, but the founding spirit, Mrs. Morgan, was undeterred. She followed Mrs. Eddy’s injunction that “Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind.” Mrs. Morgan saw human beings as channels for Divine Wisdom. From that source, education meant “to think truly and therefore effectively.” further, education leads us in “developing the power to think accurately, wisely, and with intelligent discrimination; cultivating the ability to dissect thought and to discard that which is not constructive in daily living.”

F. Oakes Sylvester, a poet and painter, worked at the Principia high school. He had a studio near Elsah, and they found that a good bit of land was available from there toward the Chautauqua site at a fair price, including the estate of Lucy Semple Ames, the wealthy businesswoman and advocate of women’s rights. The planning architect, Bernard Maybeck,  San Francisco-based, had said that the new site could be better, and he was thrilled with it as it looked over the river. His buildings work with the contours of the land and re-create the feel of an old English village. “The buildings cannot compete with the beauty of the [Elsah] location, but should fit in without effort.”  Somehow, as the Depression was wrecking fortunes, they raised money and construction started. As promised, the chapel was the first building erected. It shows the New England roots of the faith, as it is a stone version of a meetinghouse.

She was able to see the project to completion as she insisted on a motto of one of the classes: Principle not Persons.” She saw our energies too much directed to vagaries in preferences and opinions., to self-interest and self-centeredness. Divine principle “shows no partiality” and is therefore impersonal, applicable to all. She saw education as more than the acquisition of facts but a step toward wisdom.  . She did not compartmentalize her life, with her religion occupying a small corner. Hers was a thorough-going attempt to do her best to integrate her life, her whole life, with her faith. To make a vision a reality can be miraculous. To create an institution that reflects that vision, that endures through the years is a living testament and connection to those who precede us; we who stand on the “shoulders of giants.”

Review of Mark Lilla's The Once and Future Liberal

Mark Lilla is an intellectual historian at Columbia. His new book, The Once and Future Liberal is a bit of a screed. At the same time, it is the type of cultural criticism that I treasure, a book that gives us a lens to view the state of political life.

For me it crystallizes a vague disquiet that I have had for years but did not have the wit to notice well. I first noticed it in Gary Hart in 1984. He was addressing himself to the suburbs more than to the working class. I later recall the taunt of Paul Tsongas that liberals love jobs but dislike employers. I had a bad feeling when the latest Democratic convention brought o up group representatives but did not include obvious labor or working class representatives. Democrats assumed a bump in support for Sec. Clinton, but still, a majority of women voted for the president.

He places the burden of his argument on what he terms identity politics. He sees the Democrats as representing disparate groups of people, but that lack common concerns, a sense of the public interest. (See Lowi on interest group liberalism). At the convention, Democrats will tend to bring up representatives of different groups as illustrative of their concerns, but often lack a policy agenda for those concerns. On the other hand, Bernie Sanders could quickly speak of aid to college students and universal health care in every speech. In so doing, Democrats have abandoned their long standing base of support, the working class.

He makes an analogy to the new wave of political discourse to religion. It has a passion for purity, not compromise. It has a high priesthood in a hierarchy of values. It excludes others, even allies, if they do not demonstrate a dogmatic commitment to its creed of the moment. He directs most of his ire toward campus limitation of robust discussion into an echo chamber of language games. For me it would be crystallized in the notion that “dead white men” should have their work disparaged or ignored due to their race and gender. I would add that his work dovetails into my concern for discussion of privilege as a political loser. I am open to the clear signs of privilege as advantage, as unearned, undeserved advantage, and my eyes are not as open about “micro-aggressions.” to privilege the under-privileged would not necessarily lead to better information and decisions. Quite simply, it would not speak to someone in southern Indiana who is dealing with a collapsing economy and community fueled by meth and opiate abuse.

In so doing we have adopted the politics of theater, symbolic politics, more than the difficult, even agonizing work, of pounding out legislation and regulation. For me, the classic instance was Democratic representatives holding a sit-in within the very halls of Congress. From my vantage point, did any substantive change emerge, from their job as legislators, from this stunt?

Lilla suggests that we try to re-introduce the language of citizens as possessing rights and duties as a way to energize political results for the entire nation. In his views, citizens work together for common purposes. Equal protection is his lodestar for assessing the reality or appearance of privilege.

Column on World Communion Sunday

In the Great Depression, a pastor in the Pittsburgh area had an idea. The economy was in shambles, and people were struggling mightily. To see generosity and sharing in the midst of desperation, he proposed sharing the sacrament. To open foreshortened horizons, he proposed celebrating a World Communion Sunday.

Almost all Christian churches celebrate the Lord’s Supper. As a sacrament, as a ritual of unity, it marks our divisions. Some churches open the sacrament to all, and some close it to its own members in the church. In our time, many Christians share the ritual of the sacrament, but do so thoughtlessly, as part of a religious checklist.

As we approach the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation, maybe this is a good time to review some interpretations of it.  What doe sit mean when Jesus says this is my body when he broke the bread at his last Passover meal? Does something happen in the bread and wine? The Roman Catholic Church made a decision to follow Aristotle’s understanding of the world as a way to explain it: transubstantiation. (I’ve often thought that Catholic schools do well, in part, as children are exposed to words such as this at a young age). Even though it looks the same in outward appearance, its basic form changes, is transformed.

Most American Protestants emphasize the sacrament as part of the phrase- do this to remember me. If we think about it all, we use it as a memory aid to recall the death of Jesus. This is good, as far as it goes, but it neglects far too much of the sacrament’s links to our past, present, and future.

I was raised Catholic, but find the Reformed wing of the church as struggling to present an acceptable view of the sacrament. After all, when we are talking about a sacred ritual, we are trying to speak about inexpressible depths. Some of the arguments about communion stem from questions that emerge from trying to describe and analyze a liturgy. The Reformed wing sees the Holy “spirit as elevating us into the presence of Christ through the sacrament. So we are elevated with enhanced elements, instead of speaking of the risen Christ descending to us as contained in the bread and cup.

Whether or not one participates in World Communion Sunday, whether or not one happens to receive Communion this Sunday, the sacrament is a presentation of an ongoing miracle. It is a sacrament of communion, of community, of mutual participation, of bringing together. It is built into the Christian view of divinity, as the cross is the story of a continued movement to our level. It then is reversed to draw us up toward God. This enacts communion because we share in each other’s lives and the life of Christ. It points the way that we are being reformed, reshaped, conforming to the very image of Jesus Christ. This is mutual indwelling. Christ enters into the lifeblood, the current of our lives. What could be more humble than to have a broken body and spilled blood as a constant representation of the divine life? What could be more humble than to share, to   continue to demonstrate the life of Jesus Christ in a crust of bread and a thimbleful of wine? Just as Jesus bridges both divinity and humanity, this sacrament bridges the gulf between earth and heaven. In Our tradition, the spirit acts to bring us into full contact with Christ. We also see ourselves and each other as Christophers as bearers of Christ. What respect, what reverence we would then present to one another.

reflections-Week of Oct. 1

Oct. 1-Sunday-Ps. 78 is a rendition of the stubbornness of human nature when it asks, what have you done for me lately. Look at vv. 38-9, however. There God seems to realize that mortals will live in constant forgetfulness.when have you forgotten the work of God? When do you remember god as our rock(v. 35)?

Monday-"You have traveled too fast over false ground; now your soul has come to take you back." - John O'Donohue

Tuesday-Calvin-“The whole world is a theatre for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra, as it were—the most conspicuous part of it; and the nearer the approaches are that God makes to us, the more intimate and condescending the communication of his benefits, the more attentively are we called to consider them.”

Wednesday-The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid. Martin Luther

Thursday-we begin to realize that Jesus’ gaze, burning with love, expands to embrace all his people. We realize once more that he wants to make use of us to draw closer to his beloved people. He takes us from the midst of his people and he sends us to his people; without this sense of belonging we cannot understand our deepest identity.Source: The Joy of the Gospel

Friday-Christine Valters Paintner-How might living from the conscious reflection that one day you too will die affect the way you move through your day? Do you think it could change the way you perceive things and how you react to all the challenges a day brings?

Saturday-Craig Koester: "Forgiveness is the declaration that the past will not define the future. . . . Forgiveness is not acceptance of the past. . . . With that gift of forgiveness Christ Jesus opens up a future that is defined by love."

world Communion sunday-

Oct 1-As we move toward the 500th anniversary of the reformation, this day reminds us that one of the issues that split the reformation, almost immediately, was the interpretation of the sacrament of the Lord’s supper. The reformation offered a fresh start on manner matters of faith, but once again human nature took hold of an Edenic opportunity, a moment where the promised land was in sight, and we immediately set to squabbling, even over something we could scarcely grasp.Luther held to a view closer to that of the Catholic church with a focus on the literal meaning of this is my body at the last supper. The  emerging Reformed wing of the church took  a position that this is more a spiritual statement, redolent with deep symbolic meaning, more than a statement of physical state of the elements of bread and wine (see Hunsinger).

Ex.17:1-Paul says the rock was Christ.All ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink. This complaining was remembered by israel as a dangerous moment. Perhaps it is linked to the Lord’s  Prayer save us from putting god to the test.God sustains the people in the wilderness.the Lord’. We may well come to the sacrament with deep spiritual thirst, spiritual disquiet and think that complaint is our proper response.We are being pulled into christ’s orbit, a life of sharing and generous giving of ourselves.So supper should be an antidote to quarreling. Here too, God stands in front of us, with us, within us in the sacrament-yes God is with us.

Phil 2:1-13, empty/fullness at work in us-the passage is about learning to share and being emptied of egotism. A new christian perspective through Christ-Communion does not seem like nearly enough to face personal and social troubles.(see Gorman). Christ continues to pour out himself to us in communion. What does he pour out? A broken body is presented that matches broken lives, a broken world.does not selfishly exploit equality with the divine for personal advantage. God both hidden and revealed in the eucharist. Here we participate in the life of christ in our lives joined. God is truly with us here. Miracle is that God reached out to us at our level of being.

Mt.21:23-32- power and refusals is power getting people to do what they do not wish to do?what sort of power is present in communion on World Communion sunday, so it is not power over.

Ex. 17, Phil. 2, Mt. 21:23

Work on communion meaning, including participation and theosis in communion theosis is kenosis. It is built into the Christian view of divinity.the cross is the story of a continued descent to our level. It then is reversed to draw us up toward god.this communion because we share in each other’s lives and the life of christ.It points the way that we are being reformed, reshaped, conforming to the very image of Jesus christ. This is mutual indwelling.Christ enters into the lifeblood, the current of our lives.What could be more humble than to have a broken body and spilled blood as a constant representation of the divine life? What could be more humble than to sh  continue to demonstrate the life of jesus christ in a crust of bread and a thimbleful of wine? Just as jesus bridges both divinity and humanity, this sacrament bridges the gulf between earth and heaven. In Our tradition, the spirit acts to bring us into full contact with christ.we also see ourselves and each other as christophers as bearers of christ.What respect, what reverence we would then present to one another.