Latest Entries »
For prayers at community dinner last week we reflected on the Seeds query What does it mean for us to be the body of Christ? and the words of Joy Cowleys psalm…
Seeing
Dear God,
I need to see myself
as you see me.
My own vision is fragmented.
I try to divide up my life
and reject those parts of me
I consider to be weak.
I waste time and energy
in the battle of self against self
and Lord, I always end up the loser.
Dear God,
help me to see myself
as you see me.
I forget that you made me just as I am
and that you delight in your creation.
You do not ask me to be strong;
you simply ask me to be yours.
You do not expect me to reject my weakness,
merely to surrender it to your healing touch.
Dear God,
when I can see myself
as you see me,
then I will understand
that this frail, tender, fearful, aching, singing
half-empty, shining, shadowed person
is a whole being made especially by you
for your love.
“The radical church is the fastest-dying church in the world”
Myers, C. (1988) Binding the Strongman Orbis.
DISCIPLESHIP AND FAILURE: “YOU WILL ALL DESERT ME”
At the time, his words could hardly have hit home any harder, I ws still recovering from the painful breakup of my own community, the loss of home and marriage. I had never expected that the “cross” would take this shape. If readers of this book still feel it is an exercise in imaginative idealism, they should be aware that Mark’s vision is flesh to me, flesh seared and scarred. I have seen business-as-usual rudely disrupted by the kairos of the call, seen the vision of radical discipleshhip community realized. And more importantly, I have also seen those dreams fade, seen our best attempts to weave a fabric of hope and wholeness unravel, seen good persons bail out.
The radical discipleship movement today is beleaguered and weary. So many of our communities, which struggled so hard to integrate the pastoral and prophetic, the personal and the political, resistance and contemplation, work and recreation, love and justice, are disintegrating. The powerful centrifugal forces of personal and social alienation tear us apart; the “gravity” exerted by imperial culture’s seductions, deadly mediocrities, and deadly codes of conformity pull our aspirations plummeting down. Our economic and political efforts are similarly beseiged. The ability of metropolis to either crush or co-opt movements of dissent seems inexhaustable.
To Be Someone – Unique Identity & Personal Value
- How big is the question ‘Who am I?’ in your life? What have you learned about living with this question?
- How big is the question ‘What am I worth?’ (and ‘to who?’) in your life? What have you learned about living with this question?
To Be At Home – Security & Loving Harmony
- What forms of security do you feel a need for? How have you pursued these in helpful or unhelpful ways? WHat have you learned about security?
- In what living situations, communities and friendshios have you most experienced ‘loving harmony’? When was it lacking? How do you experience & nurture this now?
To Be Going Somewhere – Purpose & Progress
- How big is the question ‘What am I here for?’ in your life? What have you learned about livign with this questions? How do you continue to discern your ‘vocation’?
- What motivates you to develop and keep offering your best gifts and energies to God’s work on earth?
I fear that what might be my honest, deliberate truth might in fact be driven by my fear, or worse, that I have never been tested.
How do you measure integrity?
In this moment my truth explains, justifies, gives grace to my life. Could I ever doubt, regret, call that into question as some new learning, new light shines into my brokenness?
In every moment we are given a choice about what we do or say – watch TV? Do the readings for Uni? Check for the 5th time in 10 minutes whether someone has retweeted my tweet? How do we register the frequency of the symphonic harmony of life and step into the dance?
The only thing sadder than a life on the sidelines is not even knowing you are invited…
i tell you arise
Jesus seemed to move around a bit… city to sea, centre to margins; in between the “happenings” the speeches and stories, the healing and the casting out – he and his friends would have spent some time on the road. I wonder if this was his introverted time to recharge before the gig? Whether they’d process how it went “I don’t know, do you think they get it?”, “OMG did you see that Pharisees face? I thought he might have a heart attack”… Joy or sadness, success and frustrations poured out around a campfire at night, shared around a meal, not ranked recliners but a simple circle on the ground – men and women together, schmick tax collectors and homely fishermen. Despite having people around him all the time I bet there were times Jesus felt lonely in his vocation, times he wrestled with the call, felt caught between the surety of purpose and the unknowing of where the path would lead… and felt fear.
i tell you arise
Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Te Whiti, Dorothy Day, Ghandi, saints, prophets and witnesses have gone in that water, I am not worthy to set foot in it.
Maybe just a toe? I’ll paddle here on the edges – I can see to the bottom, sure footing… it’s safe here. I can see the way forward and the way back.
What if I’m swept off my feet? What if the current takes me? Where will it take me? I am not strong enough to swim against the current long… what if I can’t get out?
This is the river that baptised Jesus. This same water that washed his feet and that of his disciples whom he knelt to serve… this water is not of death but of life…
i tell you arise
Talitha FraserUncomfortable in my own skin
I imagine I am a shapeshifter
I read… watch movies… to embody
someone else to get relief from myself
I try to escape who I am as if that person bores me, annoys me,
repels me
I think to love someone more than myself is ridiculously easy,
to love myself as I love others…
that is a very daunting thing
to imagine.
Who might I become if I were loved?
Talitha Fraserjust one
I ask for just one miracle this weekend:
that I will no longer believe the impossible is.
That I will find the faith to believe
that liberation will come
for those who are imprisoned by their own
– or another’s –
fear and judgement.
That I will find the faith to believe
that the most intractable minds can be changed
– even my own.
That i will find the faith to believe
a different world will be born
from the empty hells of this one.
That I won’t stop living for the end
of all that would destroy us.
itellyouarise 