+ updated at 4:43pm EST, Wednesday, January 27, 2010
+ If you check the column on the left, you will see I'm doing some blog hunting these days. I've been dealing with people who do not share a significant portion of my beliefs, values and experiences lately and now I'm turning back to those who do share them. As a mentor of mine in the 1960s said: "You will die without colleagues." Thank you, my fellow spiritually and politically progressive bloggers.
+ I have enjoyed offering my beliefs and values and experiences at Viola Larson's blog, Naming His Grace. But it's time to move on. In response to "Elephants and gods: writing about an article in Hungryhearts," I offered the following final comment:
Dear Viola,
I am totally frustrated now and I think it's time for me to move on. Your belief that my belief is not as solid and truthful as yours is simply nonsense as far as I am concerned.
I have gone round and round for decades with people who find their safe harbor in the very narrow confines of Jesus-olatry and Bible-olatry. I keep trying to develop mutual respect but your side always says that my side is apostate and heretical.
Fortunately, your side is in the minority in the PC(USA) and I pray to God that it stays that way.
Having said that, I do thank you for your very sincere effort to listen to me as hard as that is for some one within your very narrow confines. Your blog is really interesting and I may be back but I need to move on for now.
A Final Word: I have tried to explain how orthodoxy is simply not the way you and others here see it but that's a losing battle within this space. It's your Blog. I hope you will be as open as you can possibly be to Truth and I hope you will change and grow.
Thanks again.
love, john a wilde, whitesboro ny + "The spirit of liberty is the spirit of not being too sure you are right.” – Judge Learned Hand
+ Something Wonderful Is Happening ... right now ... right here. I'm talking about Reality. Simply the way things really are. Not the past, not the future. Not even the present if the present is understood as a moment in time rather than eternity. So, let go. Let God. and WOW! Something Wonderful Is Happening. As Franz Kafka put it:
You do not need to do anything; you do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You do not even need to listen; just wait. You do not even need to wait; just become still, quiet and solitary and the world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
And that's a Message for the Trek. See them all at www.abundancetrek.com/mftt.
+ The Witherspoon Society offers "Big Money Talks – and the Supreme Court says its freedom of speech must be protected" by Gene TeSelle, former Issues Analyst of the Witherspoon Society. It begins: "We had suspected it for a long time, but now, thanks to a swing vote by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the United States is officially a plutocracy. On the dubious and probably perverse principles that corporations are legal persons and that political contributions are 'speech' protected by the First Amendment, restrictions on corporate contributions to issue organizations (though not to specific political campaigns) have basically been thrown out. The decision, says Mark Green in The Huffington Post, allows 'a Katrina of corporate money' to 'overwhelm the levees of democracy.'"
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6 comments:
John: Got your note. Love your pix. Marcus Borg opened my eyes. He was at my alma mater (Wake Forest) this weekend, but I'm in England. Maybe next time. I've met him a couple of time at January Adventures at St. Simon Island, Ga., along with John Dominic Crossan and Barbara Brown Taylor.
Hey John,
I enjoyed reading from afar the reparte with you and Viola and friends. It gave me a chance to hear your viewpoint which I appreciate very much. Our church as Borg writes in Heart of Christianity embraces to viewpoints the way that Viola calls orthodox and a second emerging viewpoint that you and I represent. Don't know really if they can coexist together.
John, do you think it would be better to have a split? Sometimes I think so. I would like to be member of a denomination where other members don't call me apostate and heretical because I don't subscribe to their narrow interpretation of orthodoxy. You call them "busybodies." I call them "control freaks." I really do believe that orthodoxy is essentially progressive and open. This is threatening to people in the church and society who find change scary and want to be in control rather than allow God to be in control. The "control freaks" love hierarchy and even plutocracy and they are fearful that the church is moving -- EVOLVING -- more and more to true democracy with all of the changes that represents.
I hope we don't split. I hope the Progressive movement prevails and renews and transforms our denomination and other denominations. I hope the "control freaks" take their Jesus-olatry and Bible-olatry elesewhere.
Thanks for your comment and your great blogging and ministry.
peace, joy, love,
john
Hi John, I have no energy or desire to engineer any kind of split or restructuring or whatever. I have even less energy and desire to do whatever it takes to keep things together.
I think that we need to do our ministry, speak our truths, advocate for justice, push for policy changes on behalf of justice without concern for how the "control freaks" may react.
If they decide they want to go elsewhere, great. If they decide to stay, great. But in the meantime, in no way will I let them set the agenda for what it means to follow Jesus, nor will I be afraid of their threats.
Glad you are blogging, too!
I do let those guys get to me sometimes. Thanks for reminding me that "it is by their fruits that you will know them" and "In as much as ..."
It always escapes progressives that the orthodox are not asking you to agree with us, but rather pleading that you rejoin your belief to the communion of the saints.
Nothing could be as humble on our part as laying aside the seeming wisdom of our time for something that last. Nothing could be more proud and arrogant than to look upon the testimony God has left in His people and murmur "Hath God said?"
BTW, I'm glad to see you measuring by fruits. That must mean that Pat Robertson get's a green light because of the tremendous work Operation Blessing did after Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti - no matter what boneheaded things he said. Deeds, not creeds...right?
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