Dreaming In The Deep South

Faith and Theology: When God is silent: a reflection by Wolf Krötke

2008-07-05T01:41:47Z

Faith and Theology: When God is silent: a reflection by Wolf Krötke

http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/20...

Marc Batko has been translating some essays by the leading German theologian, Wolf Krötke. Here’s a short piece that he has just sent me: “When God Is Silent” (also available in German on Krötke’s website).“Our God comes, he does not keep silence” (Psalm 50,3). That is a core sentence of the Bible. God can only be God for us because God is not silent. A speechless God is not God in the sense of the Bible. Contemporary atheists confirm this in their own way. Since they no longer hear God, God does not exist any more for them.But God’s silence is not entirely harmless. Whoever does not hear God is not simply free of God. Even atheists become irritated when they are called “godless.” “Godless” sounds so contemptuous. If I call someone who does not believe in God a “godless soul,” that sounds like a condemnation in his ears. “You dubious person,” he hears, “your life lacks any good reason.” No one likes to hear this.That “godless” has this sound for real blasphemers is strange. Our language presumably transports something owed to a biblical experience. The God who by nature is not silent is silent! When this happens, people are spit out, left without any goodness, hopelessly alone and miserable. “O God, do not keep silence; do not hold thy peace or be still,” implores another biblical praying person (Psalm 83,2). When God is silent, the power supply of his spirit and life is missing from our life. Other voices and other powers then fill the empty spaces of God’s silence.All people do not regard this as terrible. The godless type is repeatedly encountered in the psalms as a careless person who likes God’s silence. “Nothing is lacking to me,” exclaims the confessionless person of today who shuts the door on visitors from the community. Since he never hears God speak, he does not notice when God is silent. Isn’t he better off than those tormented by God’s silence since they have good experiences of God speaking?We must take this question seriously in a time when God mea...

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EfM End of Term

2008-06-02T03:59:57Z

EfMGrads08#3

An E-mail from Anne:

Dear Friends,

What a great year it was for me and Comer! So wonderful to get to know each one of you and learn with and from each other.
Thanks especially to Beth for being our leader even when we were intractable.

Here is a poem from John O'Donohue that reminds me of our search.

"Come Home To Yourself

May all that is unforgiven in you
Be released.

May your fears yield
Their deepest tranquilities.

May all that is unlived in you
Blossom into a future
Graced with love. "

Have a wonderful summer and we will see you next year or hopefully sooner.

Love,

Anne

***
Have a blessed summer. Congratulations to the graduates, and may the rest of us perservere in our studies.

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"You Shall Not Withhold Yourself"

2008-05-18T21:08:51Z

innerbattle

From:

Theological Reflection

"St. Francis de Sales was once approached by a disciple who said to him, "Sir, you speak so much about the love of God, but you never tell us how to achieve it. Won't you tell me how one comes to love God?"

And St. Francis replied, "There is only one way and that is to love Him." "But you don't quite understand my question. What I asked was, "How do you engender this love of God?" And St. Francis said, "By loving Him." Once again the pupil came back with the same question, "But what steps do you take? Just what do you do in order to come into the possession of this love?" And all St. Francis said, was, "You begin by loving and you go on loving and loving teaches you how to love. And the more you love, the more you learn to love."

And in our own day, Martin Buber has spoken in the same vein, replying to the question:

"What are we to do?" "What is to be done?" If you mean by this question, "What is one to do?" there is no answer.   One cannot help himself. With one, there is nothing to begin. With one, it is all over. He who contents himself with explaining or asking what he is to do, talks and lives in a vacuum.

But he who poses the question with the earnestness of his soul on his lips and means, "What have I to do?'" he is taken by the hand by comrades he does not know but whom he will soon become familiar with, and they answer, "You shall not withhold yourself."

Thus again, the Way will teach you the Way, and the Way is learning not to withhold yourself. The Way is learning to be with life, in life, one with life,, more and more. And there is nothing else to be learned.

****
In our EfM work this week, we reflected on the above text.

What would this world look like, the world of not withholding oneself?

It would be a world of directed energy, a world in which people know that they're good, that their skills are good and useful. Maybe it'd be a world in which people were somewhat rude -- or arrogant because they had a sense of a mission to be performed. A world of joyful engagement. We discussed how gifts and talents might differ from each other. That the sense of giftedness had a sense of innate gift, the implied sense of being beloved, loved by God for who you are not for what you have or what you do. Talent would be more implying something out of the ordinary, something that had an implied 'doingness' attached to it, rather than a 'beingness.'

And yet, from our sense of being 'enough' as ourselves, giftedness would take us into the realm of action -- being pointed in a direction and acting, clued in by what we are passionate about. We would probably not be 'hiding in' activities that take us off track.

Denial turns me away from my self and what I wish to contribute. If I am 'following my bliss', I am moving in the direction that has energy and life force for me. My love of the thing that I am all about continually re-energized my action in the world. I might also then be more willing to go counter to the prevailing group mores, counter to the culture in which I find myself.

In this world, one's point from which he or she views life and the world becomes a valuable contribution to the group. No one else can see from your position. All the points from which a view is available are valuable to get the entire picture.

What does the culture say about not withholding yourself?

Often, the culture says, do what makes money, do what is practical. That's just how the world is. We have to fit what and who we are into the world as it is SOMEWHERE. That's part of the challenge. There are also the tribal pressures to fit in , to 'be like us' or to 'be like everybody else.'
There are the more 'popular' or more highly rewarded ways of being and ways of acting in the world.
There is the conventional wisdom that you should 'decide early' and make your own way.

Tradition?

Tradition says to do what your dad did. But it also say 'to thine own self be true.' The wisdom tradition speaks to the need to be who you are and that your relationship to God within the traditions you were born into is to help you to realize who and what God made you to be. 'I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.'    (Psalm 139)

Insights and Implications for Action?

That it's important to act out of love and out of your own integrity to what you see.
That discernment might be 'is it me?' Should I speak or act in a given situation.
Try your best to see and to recognize the gifts that others might bring to the situation.
Don't withhold your gift, i.e. your ability to love, to have courage.
Respect and encourage giftedness in others.
That the process of uncovering your own and others giftedness and beloved-ness in probably discovered through the interactions of life, rather than off on your own.
"They've seen something."   When you see something, there is probably something that you have to offer to the situation.
See people.
Grant space for others' giftedness.
The mirror -- the better you see, the better you become.

COLLECT

GOD YOU ARE THE GIVER OF GIFTS
THE ENCOURAGER OF TALENTS
THE MAKER OF COMMUNITIES
WE PRAY THAT WE HAVE THE COURAGE AND THE VISION
TO NOT WITHHOLD OUR GIFTS
THAT WE NOT WITHHOLD OURSELVES.
SO THAT WE MAY LOVE TO ACT
SO THAT WE MAY ACT IN LOVE.

AMEN
**

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Theological Reflection

2008-05-12T00:04:33Z

Mother Mary

~POEM

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs the body's world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is --

so it enters us --
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.

`MARY OLIVER
FROM "DREAM WORK"

****

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart ... try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Ranier Maria Rilke

***
This post begins with the poem that Anna read to us last week. This week, we'll move into this poem, and into some of the work that came out of our reflection of vocation, calling and spiritual gifts.

***
“The other side has religion, and we need some,” said the Rev. Susan B. Thistlethwaite, president of Chicago Theological Seminary. “We need a more robust understanding of the role of religious values, values that prevent us from compromising the sanctity and dignity of human life. The left, because it is largely secular, did not do enough as the working class was finished off. And now the same thing is happening with the middle class. It is the loss of the left’s spiritual resources that has crippled the movement. The left forgot that nations, like individuals, have souls. Once you sell your soul, it is hard to get it back. History is not linear. History is about constant struggle. It is the struggle, if you come out of faith, which matters.”

****

"St. Francis de Sales was once approached by a disciple who said to him, "Sir, you speak so much about the love of God, but you never tell us how to achieve it. Won't you tell me how one comes to love God?"

And St. Francis replied, "There is only one way and that is to love Him." "But you don't quite understand my question. What I asked was, "How do you engender this love of God?" And St. Francis said, "By loving Him." Once again the pupil came back with the same question, "But what steps do you take? Just what do you do in order to come into the possession of this love?" And all St. Francis said, was, "You begin by loving and you go on loving and loving teaches you how to love. And the more you love, the more you learn to love."

And in our own day, Martin Buber has spoken in the same vein, replying to the question:

"What are we to do?" "What is to be done?" If you mean by this question, "What is one to do?" there is no answer. One cannot help himself. With one, there is nothing to begin. With one, it is all over. He who contents himself with explaining or asking what he is to do, talks and lives in a vacuum.

But he who poses the question with the earnestness of his soul on his lips and means, "What have I to do?'" he is taken by the hand by comrades he does not know but whom he will soon become familiar with, and they answer, "You shall not withhold yourself."

Thus again, the Way will teach you the Way, and the Way is learning not to withhold yourself. The Way is learning to be with life, in life, one with life,, more and more. And there is nothing else to be learned. And for this there are no techniques. We must not, therefore, look to a conference on religion and psychology to relieve us of the task of living our own lives. There are many who look to psychology or psychotherapy or to spiritual writing for answers, and this is all right up to a point, but pushed too far it becomes an escape from oneself, from one's own reality. If you keep asking, "How shall I do it?" you are not meeting your own life situation. Only your own life can teach yo how it is to believe. If we turn to psychology or to religion because we are afraid to face our own life, to sweat and to toil and to shed tears and to learn to love in the context of our own existential situation, then psychology and religion become obstacles to reality....."

Bernard Phillips, The Search Will Make You Free
quoted in Eighth Day of Creation by Elizabeth O'Connor

*****

Elizabeth O'Connor says in 'Eighth Day of Creation":

"When we talk about being true to ourselves --- being the person we are intended to be -- we are talking about gifts. We cannot be ourselves unless we are true to our gifts...

We ask to know the will of God without guessing that His will is written into our very beings. We perceive that will when we discern our gifts. Our obedience and surrender to God is in large part our obedience and surrender to our gifts (and how we would use them in response to God's love for us).

A primary purpose of the church is to help us discover our gifts, and in the face of our fears, to hold us accountable for them so we can enter into the joy of creating."

***

(Note, most of these quotes and excerpts were published on my blog "Alive on All Channels."
The cartoon was pinched from Mad Priest's blog)

*******

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To Wrap Up...

2008-05-11T23:48:44Z

Merlin & his archnemesis

"The fierce power of imagination is a gift from God"
--Kabbalah

"Love God as God is a not-God, a not-mind, a not-person, a not-image.
--Meister Eckhard Sermon 12

"O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed."
--Gerard Manly Hopkins
"No Worst, There is None"

"Sweet are the uses of Adversity
which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
--Shakespeare

Why is it so important that you are with God 
and God alone on the mountain top? It's 
important because it's the place in which you
can listen to the voice of the One who calls  
you the beloved. To pray is to listen to the 
One who calls you "my beloved daughter,"
"my beloved son," "my beloved child." To pray is to let that voice
speak to the center of your being, to your guts, and let that voice
resound in your whole being.

    --Henri Nouwen

**
Lucifer falls, Alice falls, so does Icarus. Humpty Dumpty falls.
The giant in "Jack and the Beanstalk" falls. Jack and Jill fall. The Titans
tumble earthwad for nine days straight. Elpenor slips headlong from Circe's.
roof. Adam and Eve supposedly fall, though in fact the theological idea of a
lapse into sin is Christian in origin, the necessary precondition for rapture. We must
fall so that Christ can raise us. Read Genesis, however, and you'll see that the authors
of the Hebrew scriptures, their imaginations defined perhaps by the long horizons of
the Fertile Crescent, conceive of expulsion in lateral terms. The central metaphor
is not descent but exile. Still, the experience of falling is so fundamental that is lends
itself to moral and existential embellishment.
Witnessed or not, an accidental fall entails a loss of dignity. Our upright posture most
distinguishes Homo erectus from that class of creatures that the Bible identifies as
"creeping," and no animal is creepier than that enigmatic serpent whose curse it is to
crawl upon the ground, just as no animal topples more easily than we do. Quadrupeds
wobble and trip when newborn, but rarely thereafter. Just think what a horrific sight it
is to see a racehorse go down. Implicit in the biblical stories is a kind of hierarchy of being
that seems to mirror the human body cosmologically. I suspect that Zeus and Baal and
Yahweh Himself may be associated with mountaintops and clouds in part because our eyes
are among our own most altitudinous organs. To be human is to defy gravity. To be a
snake is to embrace it. The snake is thus our anatomical opposite, though when we fall
-- or sleep, or have sex, or die -- we assume a serpentine posture, a fact implicit
in the symbolism of Genesis.
Only with the Hellenic distinction between the body and the spirit could we imagine the
dead ascending like helium balloons into the sky. The flight of Icarus is not merely an
allegory about human ambition. It is an allegory about our ambition to slip our mortal
bonds. Only the soul may ascend; the body must plummet. To be earthbound is to be
deathbound. In the theater of battle to fall means to die. The same logic governs the
collapse of architecture and empires, those collective attempts to defy gravity and time.
But there is also a pleasure in falling, in giving in, in assenting to gravity's pull. Although
we can fall into disgrace, we can also fall into a trance, or sleep, or love. What these
experiences have in common is the surrendering of the will -- to music, or to unconsciousness,
or to another. These are all varieties of bewilderment. In the absence of pain, falling ill
can accord some of the same pleasures as falling in love. There is a voluptuousness to
illness, the eros of the infantile. Even seemingly disastrous falls can be accompanied by
the joy of relief or the exhilaration of chaos.
***
"Contact! Contact!" Thoreau shouted at the heavens from atop Mount Ktaadn. "Where
are we? Who are we?" And the heavens did not reply."

From "Falling; Confessions of a lapsed forest Christian" by Donovan Hohn
Harpers Magazine, April 2008

****
Do you know Flannery O’Connor’s short story entitled – succinctly – “Revelation”? It is about one Mrs Turpin from the deep South. Mrs Turpin is a hard-working, upright, church-going farmer’s wife. One day, at her doctor’s office, she is bad-mouthing the white trash and lazy blacks she has to put up with. Suddenly a mentally disturbed girl in the waiting room throws a book at her and calls her a “wart hog from hell”. Visibly shaken, Mrs Turpin returns to her farm, unable to get the girl’s offensive words out of her mind. “Wart hog” indeed! For Mrs Turpin knows that she is a good person, certainly far superior to red necks and “niggers”, and she reminds God of her rectitude, as well as of all the good work she does, especially for the church. Then she angrily asks, referring to the girl’s outrageous insult, “What did you send me a message like that for?” And then, suddenly – revelation! As she stares into the pigpen, Mrs Turpin is given a glimpse of “the very heart of mystery,” and she begins to absorb some “abysmal life-giving knowledge.” She has a vision of a parade of souls marching to heaven, with white trash, blacks, freaks, lunatics and other social outcasts up front, leading the way, and, taking up the rear, folk like herself, “marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behaviour. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.”

Yes, religion is a bargain, but revelation is no bargain, revelation is grace, it is free. Nothing is necessary, all is a gift. We have no rights, we are never owed, and we are never one up on the bastards and undeserving. That “scum” I thought I’d left behind – I didn’t: it was me too, and I took it with me. But no matter: God’s sun shines and his rain falls on the good and the evil without distinction. As Oxford Regius Professor of Divinity Marilyn McCord Adams puts it: “Expecting God to be interested in invidious distinctions among us would be like our judging the ladybugs to see which had paid us the appropriate honour!”

God is sheer, exuberant, overflowing, prodigal love, inside and out, from top to bottom. May God grant us the insight and wisdom that Mrs Turpin takes home with her that fateful night: “In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.”

(from Faith and Theology)

***

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Vocation and Calling

2008-05-09T05:09:06Z

walking path England

This was a version of Common Lesson Five (EfM) done by John deBeer's model of vocation discernment and calling.

This exercises uses as its texts, Psalm 139 (CHERISHED); Corinthians 12:1- 12 (GIFTED) ; Exodus 2:11-3:10 (PASSIONATE); Ephesians 4: 1-16 (COMMITTED); and 1 Corinthians 12: 14 -31 (COMMUNAL).

deBeer draws from James Fowler's work in creating a model for vocation in Weaving the New Creation (San Francisco: Harper, 1991).

Elizabeth O'Connor , in Eighth Day of Creation

"When we talk about being true to ourselves -- being the person we are intended to be -- we are talking about gifts. We cannot be ourselves unless we are true to our gifts...

We ask to know the will of God without guessing that His will is written into our very beings. We perceive that will when we discern our gifts. Our obedience and surrender to God is in large part our obedience and surrender to our gifts (and how we would use them in response to god's love for us.)

A primary purpose of the church is to help us discover our gifts, and in the face of our fears, to hold us accountable for them so we can enter into the joy of creating."

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Enneagram Resources

2008-04-25T23:51:32Z

Enneagram

Enneagram test

Enneagram Institute
Don Richard Riso & Russ Hudson's website.
Enneagram type descriptions, online test (RHETI), articles and discussion board.

Helen Palmer's website

Ennea Graphs
Images and a compilation of type descriptions by several authors.
The Enneagram Handbook
Booklet by Chris Wright (PDF-file).
The Trouble With Typing
Pitfals in using the Enneagram system (written by Thomas Condon).
Enneagram Test
Determine your Enneagram personality type.

Enneagram type One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine
Descriptions of the personality types.
Instinctual variants
The self-preservation, the sexual and the social instinct.
TYPE CORRELATIONS

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Cherished

2008-04-22T23:06:24Z

Landscape_tula_telfair

Psalm 139 (English Standard Version)

Search Me, O God, and Know My Heart

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.

1 O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
   you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
   and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
   behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
   and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
   it is high; I cannot attain it.

7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
   Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
    If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
   and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light about me be night,"
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light with you.

13 For you formed my inward parts;
   youknitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;
   my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,when I was being made in secret,
   intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance ; in your book were written, every one of them,
   the days that were formed for me,
   when as yet there was none of them.

17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more thanthe sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

****

REFLECTION

We reflected on

what kind of a world was described in this psalm?

Is it a world without free will? If God has searched us and known us, and knitted us together in our mothers' womb, is this a God who denies us choice and will? Does this God manipulate and control or grant ultimate freedoms to his creations?

Or -- is it more that this world is a world in which God is constantly present with us, amidst all the events of life, both good and bad? Is 'Presence' more the nature of God than God who looks like and acts like a human being?

Is this world like the world in which the parent watches over the child, and anticipates what the child will choose or will do? In that world the parent seeks to be present, even though the parent allows the child to explore freely and make mistakes and missteps.

Another point from which to view might be to see that , 'wherever I go I am there' -- that if I seek to live with the truth, I cannot ever get away from myself entirely. I must be present for all of the events of my life. As the Sufis say, our Presence is also implicate of the Presence of God within us as us.

Perhaps this is the world of exhilarated contact with God as the creative spirit, the Creator God in whose image we are made. When we are filled with this 'graced' presence of God, we can see that this Grace is always present, even though we cannot always see it or be aware of it.

The world of this psalm speaks of a world of companionship and a world of Grace.

***

WHAT IS A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION IN THIS WORLD?

Being alive, having spirit, energy, enthusiasm, vision, vitality, connection. It is a celebration of each person as having their own special-ness. I am who I am no matter what. What I do doesn't necessarily change or impact the Being-ness that is me. I have knowledge of my own nature, and I see it reflected in the world around me. We might use the metaphor of air -- we are surrounded by it and permeated by it, and yet we might not be specifically aware of it as it connects to us in a moment-to-moment kind of way.

MAKE CONNECTION WITH YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE (ACTION).

Each person who wished to gave examples from their life, of having this kind of experience, and where it seemed to come from. Often, it was, indeed, 'graced' in that the person couldn't connect it to having 'done' anything in particular, it just came to them unsought in the midst of ordinary life.

CULTURE ?

In our world we are used to thinking in 'pairs of opposites' in terms of either/or. Our nervous system is binary, and we tend to see ideas in relationship to or opposed to other ideas. In this Psalm we might look at it as being coaxed into more of a both/and point of view. It's not that God knows us completely and is always with us in a claustrophobic way, as if God were a human being. How else can we evaluate except to measure how we know something, that is in human terms. God can know us completely and be present for us and to us in all of them events of life AND we can also be completely free.

INSIGHTS ? IMPLICATIONS FOR ACTION ?

This (life that we have been given . Now. ) is It. Everything that we need is here in the life that we have right now. There is nothing missing or absent. We always have the knowledge that Larger Life is there, somewhere available to us.

Several people had the insight, voiced in different ways, that its good to be present, to be open. Staying open to the possibilities before us seems to be important.

We also voiced gratitude for the poet/ psalmist. That it's good to celebrate the writings and insights of others.

There are constant distractions to Mindfulness. that our own relationships and practices might be helpful towards maintaining greater mindfulness.

COLLECT

GOD YOU ARE ALWAYS THERE
NO -- HERE
YOU ARE WONDERFULLY MADE.

WE PRAY THAT WE KEEP OUR
EARS AND EYES OPEN TO YOU
EVEN IN JAIL.

SO THAT
WE MEND OUR BUTTERFLY NETS
WE STRENGTHEN WITH LAUGHTER
WE FEEL YOUR PRESENCE.

AMEN

****

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Abundance is Seeking....

2008-04-17T04:20:55Z

Int'l Women's Day- bern Suisse

ABUNDANCE IS SEEKING THE BEGGARS AND THE POOR;
JUST AS BEAUTY SEEKS A MIRROR.
BEGGARS, THEN , ARE THE MIRRORS OF GOD'S ABUNDANCE,
AND THEY THAT ARE WITH GOD ARE
UNITED WITH ABSOLUTE ABUNDANCE.

RUMI

***
Anne led our reflection tonight, based on Rumi's poem "Abundance is Seeking"...

We began by asking "what kind of a world is this? " in which abundance is seeking the beggars and the poor?

We had to start with asking how 'abundance' is used in this poem.   Perhaps abundance is speaking about a state of awareness, or a graced state where we know and understand our connection with others in a broader more inclusive way....

We receive when we honor those with whom we share.   But then again,   it seems that we come back again and again to polarity, the economic differences between classes, cultures, between rich and poor. Our discussion of abundance was contentious, debating the different senses of 'abundance' that Rumi might be talking about...

Perhaps people with wealth want to buy 'beauty' (art , decor, etc).   Perhaps abundance is more about an appreciation of what you have. Perhaps abundance is the potential of the individual. What does Rumi imply, concerning an absolute abundance? Would it be that all would have material needs met, or is he talking about something else? Perhaps absolute abundance has to do with caring for all people.

Rosa shared a story that she had heard that implied that when one has debts, one is carrying a lack of forgiveness. So, in that case, would forgiveness bring wealth as it's natural consequence?
Does both debt and abundance have life force in and of itself? Do these qualities pursue all of us equally, if we allow ourselves to open to receive?

Do these qualities seek their opposites? For example, a hungry person would seek having their hunger satisfied. So would abundance then naturally seek a beggar?

What would count as negative in this world?

We decided that it would be to turn one's back on need, or refusing to see need.
Abundance doesn't count the cost , so would true abundance have any waste?

We talked about stewardship, about recycling, that there aren't 'infinite' resources, that taking care of what has been entrusted to us is also part of the world of abundance.

What does the tradition say about this world?

We talked about the story of the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her hair and lavished him with perfume, and the disciples disapproved, and felt that it was wasteful. But Jesus' response was to honor her gift. That this lavish expression of love came from an abundant and overflowing heart. That a good many of the parables Jesus told had to do with upsetting the ordinary order of things, they were about turning reality and social respectability on its head. We might assume that we know the answers and the right responses, but we might not. We have to look at what brings us closer to communion with God and with other human beings.

We see or we know this beauty, and we reflect it.. Abundance is anyone who has something to give. Who has a gift or something to offer. When a person knows that they have a lot to give, a lot to contribute to others or to the society, then they begin to share out of that great abundance of God's generous gifts to us.

So, sharing is true abundance, and potential is then 'infinite' ....

COLLECT;

GOD YOU ARE INFINITY AND ABUNDANCE

WE PRAY THAT WE MIRROR THAT IN OURSELVES
AND HAVE GIFTS TO GIVE TO OTHERS

SO THAT WE MAY UNITE WITH GOD
WITH FULL HEARTS IN
ABSOLUTE ABUNDANCE

AMEN

*****

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Vocation and Call

2008-04-08T20:16:17Z

Orb-angelfrance

John de Beer

“A Biblical Framework for Vocation and Call”

Friday & Saturday
April 18 – 19
Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip

“Your calling or vocation is to be your true self, to mature into the person in whom God delights. Vocation, identity, gifts and ministry are all interconnected. Too often the church has talked to you about your “ministries,” whether in the church or the world, without helping you to do the deeper work of discerning your vocation. Genuine vocation provides an authentic path that strengthens the sense of identity and freedom of those who respond to God’s call.”
-- John de Beer

In this course the Rev. de Beer will be leading us to do the deep work of discerning vocation. This course is for all who seek to reflect on their continued call to ministry. For Education for Ministry mentors, students and graduates, this is a unique option to enrich your experiences with Common Lesson 5, “Planning Your Ministry”. Each session will include presentations, individual reflection and group discussions.

Friday April 18
5:30 Registration opens
6:00 Dinner served
6:30 “Cherished and Called”
9:00 Adjourn

Saturday April 19
8:30 Coffee & Registration
9:00 “Gifted and Passionate”
12:00-12:45 Luncheon
1:00 -3:00 “Committed and Supported”
3:00-3:30 Q&A and Closing

The Rev. Dr. John de Beer is priest-in-charge of St. Mark's, Burlington, Mass. He received his Doctor of Ministry in Congregational Development, 2005, Seabury Institute, Evanston, Illinois; Master of Arts, Theology, 1969,University of Oxford, England; and B. Sc., Mathematics, Physics, 1966, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is one of the developers of Education for Ministry (EFM), a national program of the University of the South, School of Theology, and co-author of The Art of Theological Reflection.

The cost is $65 per person and includes all meals and study materials.
Register securely online at www.episcopalinstitute.org or print a mail-in form.
Clergy will be awarded Six (6) Contact Hours.

For further information on the Institute, programs and scholarships, please contact:
Nancy Armstrong Linda Scott
narmstrong@episcopalatlanta.org lscott@episcopalatlanta.org (404) 601-5353 or (800) 537-6743

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