The Spirit Is for All

2 Replies

The Center for Action and Contemplation provides another message of diversity and inclusion. Check out the excerpts from their message below and the two contributing authors as well.

The Spirit Is for All

Thursday, May 23, 2024 at cac.org/daily-meditations/the-spirit-is-for-all/

Author Lisa Sharon Harper describes the diversity of the early church: 

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit rushed in and caused all those present to speak in languages that were not their own. Each person understood the others…. God established the confusion between languages at the Tower of Babel (see Genesis 11). At Pentecost, God brought the languages together, but not in the way we would imagine. God did not unite the world under one imperial language. Rather, the power of God made it possible to have unity in the midst of diversity. God made it possible for people to speak languages that were not their own and to understand one another.    

In other words, all the cultural, economic, and gender barriers between them were broken down. [1]   

Theologian Luke Powery names how the Holy Spirit’s presence is given for all, not just some:  

No human voice or body is denied the presence and fire of God. Humans, regardless of ethnicity or race, speak a multiplicity of languages to reveal the diversity of God from the beginning, which is the vision of the end….  

Pentecost… creates a new world. It is a new creation ignited by the Spirit. The Spirit may be “unsought” or “unwanted” but is “intent on making all things new.” [3] This includes new flesh, a new body for the people of God. [4] 

References:  
[1] Lisa Sharon Harper, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right (New York: Waterbrook, 2016), 183–184.   

[2] Zora Neale Hurston, The Sanctified Church (Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island, 1981), 91. 

[3] Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, The Holy Spirit (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2015), 35.  

[4] Luke A. Powery, Becoming Human: The Holy Spirit and the Rhetoric of Race (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2022), 70–71, 73, 75. 

lisasharonharper.com/about-lisa/

chapel.duke.edu/staff/rev-dr-luke-powery

Emily Bronte’s Faith Poem

Leave a reply

“A deity synonymous with Nature … (Emily Bronte’s) poem of faith … finds its affirmation not through anthropomorphic rendering but in a pantheistic (and multiverse?) vision of Deity’s universal immanence.”

RJ’s analysis of Emily Bronte’s poem is both instructive and inspiring. Check it out at the link below.

Emily Brontë’s Faith Poem: “No Coward Soul is Mine”

Zen Is the Religion of Brushing Our Teeth

Leave a reply

Below are excerpts from a delightful post by Myojin on the purpose of religion and why Zen is different.

Hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Religion as a bastion of idealism

For some it’s the belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing God, who cares about our lives.

For others it’s about a better way to live, through morality, devotions, spiritual practices; prayer, meditation. Be the aim union with divinity, greater connection to others, to live more fully in the moment

Any practice is based on the premise that there is a better way to live than the way we are living now.

If zen is a religion it’s the religion of getting up in the morning and brushing our teeth. It’s the religion of ordinary things, stripped of fantasy and exposed to stark truth.

Zen is making up our minds that since we are here anyway, living life, we may as well do it well.

From Fundamentalism to Atheism

5 Replies

Blind faith? Faith can move mountains? Faith of our fathers? Author Richard Fast offers a critique on faith worth reading, I think.

“I’m NOT trying to sell Atheism … “God” forbid. I’m selling the concept of searching and finding your faith.”

Check out an excerpt from Richard Fast’s provocative article recently published in Backyard Church

I Finally Found Peace When I Accepted Atheism

The more I searched for answers outside myself, the more frustration and anxiety I felt.

I became an Atheist. I had found my answer.

I didn’t require a God or a particular faith to settle my tormented soul. With total peace of mind, I could accept that there doesn’t have to be a God. The universe could just be a beautiful mystery.

I didn’t have to invent or conjure anything to calm my soul. I didn’t have to force myself into mental contortions to follow someone else’s belief; I could happily accept that there are many questions to which I will never know the answers, and I’m okay with that.

Conclusion: True “faith” feels right.

If history has taught us anything, there’s very little we can honestly know. Finding faith is a uniquely human experience that makes the challenging road of life a little easier to travel.

But many years of searching, thinking, deep introspection, and an acceptance of Atheism (the unknowable) have finally given me peace of mind.

I’m NOT trying to sell Atheism … “God” forbid. I’m selling the concept of searching and finding your faith.

Whatever that may be, I sincerely hope that you find your faith, as I’ve finally found mine.

I am the author of The Challenge of Choice … how to make a “good” decision when it REALLY matters!

Excerpt from How to Free Yourself from the 7 Obsessions

3 Replies

I hate to wait and that has been a life-long challenge for me. Below is an excerpt from a recent Lion’s Roar article that helps me better understand why.

Valerie Mason-John, M.A. is a public speaker and master trainer in the field of conflict transformation, leadership and mindfulness, the author of ten books and the Co-Founder of Eight Step Recovery, an alternative to the 12-step program for addiction.

http://www.valeriemason-john.com

How to Free Yourself from the 7 Obsessions

To free ourselves from habitual patterns, says Valerie Mason-John, we need to see how they have become part of our identity.

VALERIE MASON-JOHN 8 MAY 2024

Watch your thoughts; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become stories.
Watch your stories; they become excuses.
Watch your excuses; they become relapses.
Watch your relapses; they become dis-eases.
Watch your dis-eases; they become vicious cycles.
Watch your vicious cycles; they become your wheel of life.

Every time we habitually react, the past is present.

We transcend our habits by allowing a part of our superego to die.

For more from Valerie Mason-John check out these two websites:

http://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-free-yourself-from-the-7-obsessions/

http://www.valeriemason-john.com

A Heart-Centered Revolution

2 Replies

Are you lovable? Do you have a perspective worth sharing? Is the world better off for you being here?

Today’s meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation includes a challenge from Jacqui Lewis to “really see.” See an excerpt below and read the full meditation on cac.org.

jacquilewis.com

A Heart-Centered Revolution Excerpt

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis writes of the solidarity necessary to transform our culture and our world: 

In order to live a moral life, a good life, an ubuntu life, we must commit to a life of love that means seeing all the things ..… 

Friend, you are the only one standing where you stand, seeing what you see, with your vantage point, your story. You are right there for a reason: to have, as my dear friend Ruby Sales says, “hindsight, insight, and foresight.” I want us to learn to see, with our eyes wide open, how best to be healers and transformers. I want us to really see, to fully awaken to the hot-mess times we are in and to the incredible power we have to love ourselves into wellness…. 

I want us open to revelation, not afraid of it, and open to the ways that it will provoke us to believe assiduously in how lovable we each are, and in the love between us and among us because, actually, believing is seeing. [2]  

[2] Jacqui Lewis, “Apocalypse Now: Love, Believing, and Seeing,” Oneing 10, no. 1, Unveiled (Spring 2022): 44–45. Available in print and PDF download. 

An Integrated Life

2 Replies

Doctor (and Sister) Joan Chittister shares her weekly Vision and Viewpoint newsletter today with her comments below on the importance of “living an integrated life.” You can learn more about her and the Benedictine religious community in Erie, Pennsylvania at this website: joanchittister.org/~joanchit/

“Do not lie, even to yourself

Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Gandhi could have been a Benedictine. Humility is about living an integrated life, a life in which each part is in harmony with every other dimension.
 
The person who lives a lie, for instance, no matter how effective otherwise, is in tension every moment of the day.
 
The truth is that we are meant to be transparent.

Be what you say you are. Do not lie, even to yourself. Don’t live two lives

At the end, three things measure both our integrity and the harmony of our own lives: self-control, respect, and freedom from self-deception.

a process of slow and self-emptying transformation
 
enjoy the rest of the adventure called life, learning, becoming, growing as we go.

                  —from Radical Spirit (Random House), by Joan Chittister 

joanchittister.org/books-page/radical-spirit-12-ways-live-free-and-authentic-life

Finding Home in Ourselves

2 Replies

“Don’t forget … to call yourself Home.” Kaitlin Curtice

This is a beautiful excerpt from the Center for Action and Contemplation about Kaitlin Curtice’s writing on the sacred legacy of home.

Check out both links identified below. You will be comforted and edified.

http://www.kaitlincurtice.com

Finding Home in Ourselves
 
Author Kaitlin Curtice writes about the sacred legacy of home:  

May we always return to the places where the stories begin, to challenge them, to accept and honor them, and to whisper to ourselves and one another that we are always, always arriving. 

Don’t forget, 
my love, 
to live. 

Don’t forget 
to love yourself, 
all of you, 
from every season 
and every place, 
because you never know 
when they will 
come knocking for 
a cup of coffee 
and an overdue hug. 

call yourself Home. 

Love Is Home

Leave a reply

“Felicia Murrell acknowledges that our first homes are not always safe …

How are you preparing a home of unconditional acceptance for yourself?“

Today’s Center for Action And Contemplation message offers a provocative post on where we can find our true home. Check out this beautifully written message by Felicia Murrell and her quotes from The Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baum.

“Home,” says Glinda the Good, “is a place we all must find, child. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.”

https://feliciamurrell.com/

Love is Home
 
Felicia Murrell acknowledges that our first homes are not always safe:  

For some, home is terror, a place to flee with no desire to return or revisit.

Often, when we think of home, we think only of an external place,

Love is home.  

Home is both an external dwelling and an internal abode. Home is the place where we belong, our place of acceptance and welcome. There, in this shame and judgment-free embryonic cocoon of love, we practice unconditional acceptance; we learn to relate to ourselves and the world around us.  

How are you preparing a home of unconditional acceptance for yourself?

“Home,” says Glinda the Good, “is a place we all must find, child. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.” [3] 

 [3] Joel Schumacher, The Wiz: Screenplay, adapted from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (New York: Studio Duplicating Service, 1977).