Sand Creek

#blacklivesmatter

My school president and some of our wonderful professors discussing theologies of protest and resistance, specifically as such theologies relate to Baltimore and the Black Lives Matter protests.

Longing

"Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time… You don’t really long for another country.  You long for something in yourself that you don’t have, or haven’t been able to find."

— from “The Bella Lingua”

MLK

#Repost @tza_taught_you
・・・
~ “ Its more than police brutality .. It’s genocide . Stop trying to justify them killing off our brothers , stop telling us that we should peaceful protest when we live in a country that goes to WAR for PEACE . ”

William James

"So long as we deal with the cosmic and the general, we deal only with the symbols of reality, but as soon as we deal with private and personal phenomena as such, we deal with realities in the completest sense of the term… The world of our experience consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or suppressed. The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner “state” in which the thinking comes to pass… Yet the cosmic objects, so far as the experience yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose existence we do not inwardly possess but only point at outwardly, while the inner state is our very existence itself, its reality and that of our experience are one."

— William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (via churchtake-out)

Thomas Merton

Wisdom From Television

"To make it - really make it - as a surgeon - it takes major commitment. We have to be willing to pick up that scalpel and make a cut that may or may not do more damage than good. It’s all about being committed, because if we’re not? We have no business picking up that scalpel in the first place.
There are times when even the best of us have trouble with commitment, and we may be surprised at the commitments we’re willing to let slip out of our grasp. Commitments are complicated. We may surprise ourselves by the commitments we’re willing to make. True commitment, takes effort, and sacrifice. Which is why sometimes, we have to learn the hard way, to choose our commitments very carefully."

—

narration from “Let the Angels Commit,” episode 3.06 of Grey’s Anatomy

What are we committing to in our lives?  Our jobs?  Our families?  Justice?

Sermons

“Those who pray as though all depends on God still bear the burden of working as though all depends on themselves.”–Fred Craddock

This reminded me of something Brent Walters, a professor in my undergrad program, said, which was something along the lines of “God’s not going to teach you history or Greek.”  While listening to the Spirit is important and we can expect it to play a role in our sermon writing and delivery as well as in the reception of those sermons, we also need to understand the limits of inspiration.  The work sits on our desk, not God’s.  It’s also important for me to remember that not everything can or needs to be said about a particular passage (“On any given Sunday, many wonderful Christian things will not be said”).  Often in speaking about a particular passage or Gospel, I seek to explain everything as completely as I can, when the reality is that there is such a thing as “too much.”  Sometimes facts can get in the way of a message and sometimes there may be a multiplicity of sermons sitting in a passage, but that doesn’t mean I should try to deliver them all simultaneously.  There will always be another Sunday to talk about the passage again in a different light.

Violence

#Repost @thejusticeconference
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Violence cost the world nearly 10 billion last year. Seems like we should wage more peace than war.

Process and Reality

"Every actual entity in its relationship to other actual entities is in this sense somewhere in the continuum, and arises out of the data provided by this standpoint.  But in another sense it is everywhere throughout the continuum; for its constitution includes the objectifications of the actual world and thereby includes the continuum; also the potential objectifications of itself contribute to the real potentialities whose solidarity the continuum expresses.  Thus the continuum is present in each actual entity, and each actual entity pervades the continuum."

— Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality

Center

We need to keep God at the center of our words and actions.  Being able to make powerful criticisms and convey our anger in positive ways– that needs to have God at the center.  Only when we let Love live in our core can we celebrate faith while being honest with how much potential for (and history of) damage religion has.  This is something that I will need to remember, as a person for whom reform is very important.  

Not That I'm Capable, But...

I like sermons that are like (and this is silly, but true), the Splash Mountain ride at Disneyland.  It begins meandering and slow, evenly paced, and suddenly you’re rushing down a waterfall and dumped into a dance party.  It made me think of how important it can be to create a snowball effect.  Perhaps saving the most lovely combinations of words and powerful phrasing for the end can be a way to create transformation.  

Responsible Consumerism

I often think about how our systems keep us complicit in the oppression of the voiceless– those trafficked individuals who make our clothes, the animals who we torture for food, the Earth we plunder for profit.  The act of oppressing each of these groups (whether we all agree or not on what we consider appropriate means to ends) is rooted in our anthropocentric understandings of human existence… many of which are rooted in traditional biblical understandings.  I know that a goal of my ministry will be to try to give voice to each of these groups and help people consider the ways that we can “control our ripples” and undermine these cruel acts of dominion by how we (at least those of us who have some agency and freedom in how we can spend money) contribute to these systems and the ways we can reject them.

The Absence of God

Perhaps we can take comfort that our spiritual predecessors whose lives we have glimpses of in the Bible, often lamented the seeming absence of the divine… yet book after book will show us that encounter continues and that our experience is, indeed, cyclical.  The Sun will rise and set.  We have to know it will come back and that there will be periods of darkness.

The Call of an Introvert

I identify as a quiet person who may seem, on the surface, an “unlikely” presence in ministry.  I don’t need to become an extrovert to embrace my voice; I need to offer an authentic self and truly develop who I Am.  What people want or expect is not necessarily what they need and to offer different kinds of voices and presentation is necessary to articulating a vision of God that can encompass all.