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Tag: Christian

Arm Yourselves with Love Alone

ARM YOURSELVES WITH LOVE ALONE

No,  we will not all survive this. Some lives have already been lost.  Many more are at risk of losing health care, being “disappeared”, met with violence, or starvation. These risks are already at play.   No, not everyone will be okay.  That is a baseline we may have to accept.   

Practicing some level of acceptance allows us to concentrate our power and creativity on resisting what we refuse to accept, the places where we must have courage to change what we can.  

¡Resistance is never futile! Those who can only imagine creating a world by force will always be conquered eventually, sometime hoisted by their own petard, but they will always crumble.  The more tyrannical and ignorant the despot, the harder they fall.  The less they know of love the quicker they become dust. 

But the virtue and resilience of those who know to endure with integrity, even if it costs them their life, will sow the seeds of a beautiful future, a beloved community where character, insight, and wisdom matter. 

There have been peaceful, thriving communities throughout history that have furthered the evolution of the human race as God has desired and empowered us to do.  

We cannot guarantee what will happen to our own fate when tiny men driven by fear and inadequacy seize power.  

We can trust what their fate will be.

And we can shape the fate of the world to come. 

For no tyrant will determine history.  No coward controls our fate as the human race.

There is no greater power than love.  

There is no greater power than love. 

And those who rely on any other power to make their mark on history 

Will be forgotten and eclipsed by the courageous and powerful love we carry in our bodies at all times.  

In my tradition, the resurrection tells us no one can override God’s judgment and no one can kill God. God is love, and so no one can kill the love within you. Even if your body disappears.  

Don’t poison yourself with the power of violence they fetishize, the violence on which their hopes rely.   Instead, arm yourselves with love alone, start now, and you will be crafting the future of the human race.

Only love remains. Remains.  

From Resisting Arrest.  

. Douglas Harrison 

Being Moved

Welcome. Let us Work Toward a Hard Goodbye. — Living well in the discovery and the loss of friendships.

“Well,” Fr. Francis said, “That is a relationship and relationships go through transitions.”   Of all of the things I have been mulling over in trying to make sense of a painful friendship, this one made the difference.  It was so simple, and apparently truthful because it made my gut ache.

Tohu-Bohu

How my relationship with Jesus is, and is not, personal.

When I was young I would go to camp or a youth service where I was told that what I needed was a personal relationship with Jesus.  It made a kind of sense as a lot of things do for children because I was still relying on other people to teach me how to make sense of things. So I agreed, with no regrets.

Buddy Christ
Buddy Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

However, I happen to be the kind of person, and have been since childhood, to throw myself headlong into the task at hand whatever it may be.   So I was bound and determined to have the most personal relationship with Jesus a person could have. This is a dangerous prayer.  The trouble began when I took it so seriously it started to take my life in some surprising if not shocking directions that none of my youth pastors had anticipated.

Faith for Reasons.

Reasons for my Faith. …from someone who has nothing to prove

 

J. Douglas Harrison. The Patient

In the next few weeks  I will occasionally be posting some reflections on what it can mean to have faith in a time when the Christian faith may seem, at least to many people, quite unreasonable.

I won’t try to provide irrefutable evidence in favor of the Christian faith.  I will not be presenting argumentative ‘facts’ or try to show that Christianity is obviously intellectually superior to everything else as others may  have tried to do.  I have nothing here to prove.   I have nothing here to buy or sell.  Instead, I believe there are different genres by which we come to see what moves people to live as they do.

Faith for Reasons.

“No Wonder the Door Won’t Open, Silly. I am Already Inside.” -Three things about being a misfit in communities of grace that I keep having to re-learn.

Clearly I write from a position of someone who sits near the exit.  I love church, but sometimes I find it exhausting. I love my weirdo burner friends, and sometimes they can be a little harsh on my faith.   I long to be in Christian community, yet, depending on the community, I find myself itching to get out. I am finding that there are hidden moments of grace ready for the taking in all kinds of communities. And when I am willing to exercise a little humility and receive it, I find that that grace goes further than the edges of my life, and often finds its way into the open wild.

The Impossible Will Take A little While.

The Impossible Will Take A Little While.

It is harder than it looks to know how to take Easter. On the one hand it feels like an easy home run, a touchdown, a triumphal entry.   But those were the kinds of thing we were celebrating last week. How then is this week different?   For one thing it amazes how few people  to whom Jesus appeared after the resurrection.

The first to arrive.

One would think he would be taking out billboards all over town that said, “I told you so!”  but he doesn’t.    The first to see Jesus would be the last we would expect.   It was not the disciples, not even his family, but one of the worst outcasts of all of his company: Mary Magdalene.

"Disappointed with God"

“Unless our Hopes Fall to the Ground and Die” — We have some grieving to do, but not for Jesus.

The Gospel of Mark is my favorite.  I especifically  love the eighth chapter.   It is hysterical.  I still find myself being caught off guard and LOL-ing sometimes.
The disciples are dolts.  They have the hardest time learning the most obvious lessons.  Jesus goes and feeds several thousand, gets on a boat with them, and suddenly they are afraid Jesus will be mad because the didn’t pack a lunch.  Zheesh.  In that same chapter Jesus heals this man in a most unusual way and he has to do it twice.  Either Jesus is losing his touch or Mark is writing to try to be be obvious: We don’t see clearly yet.   The first time Jesus touches the blind man he sees part way. ” I see people, like trees walking around.”   I get that.  That makes sense to me.  If he is still half blind, then he is not wrong.  But there is more to be seen and it will be a shocker.   So don’t stop now…

"Disappointed with God"

Manic Maundy: How you can prevent waging a personal war-on-Easter.

ora et labora

It is springtime and it seems the hectic demands I usually have around Christmas are beginning to over take Holy Week as well.  Besides my normal work obligations I have time sensitive art projects, volunteer work, some important events with my friends and of course, church services.  I feel like I am waging my own personal  war on Easter trying to figure out what the most Christian choices I can make are.  I suspect that I am not at all alone in this.  I find myself asking familiar questions about what Christianity is all, “about,”

"Disappointed with God"