Church Is Only Half Of What We Should Be?

"Phil, I’d quit making the Sunday service your sole form of sustenance. At this point in the Church, we’ve moved far enough away from the original design in Acts to safely assume that what we’re doing on Sunday is about half (at best) of what we need to be about as a community.
At its origin, the Church was a place where people deeply engaged with one another's stories, shared life and food, prayed, and invited new people to be a part of the journey. A church service in and of itself isn’t bad, by any means, but it is not everything. To get everything, you have to diversify your investments and examine what it is you expect Sunday to be.( Help! I'm Bored With Church. By Eddie Kaufholz. March 31, 2014.)

Read more at http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/church/help-im-bored-church#wvurhLTBHWWcc8kL.99

Read more at http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/church/help-im-bored-church#wvurhLTBHWWcc8kL.99 "

More Church Troublemakers Please....

"From Martin Luther to Martin Luther King Jr, many who are considered saints or heroes of history today were, at one time, thought to be troublemakers.

They are the men and women who stirred up trouble in their day because they were not content with the status quo. They are those who had vision and were able to see beyond the way things are and dream about the way things could be and should be. They risked everything and worked and spoke out for change." (Why the Church Needs More Troublemakers. Michael Hidalgo. Relevant Magazine. March 31, 2014)

Fresh Prospects. .....

"Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Is There A Place For Rest And Gazing?

"I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undistur- bed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what "
( Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Low Vision Shepherds

"What should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts?"
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Just Write Them Off As Disgruntled People. Who CarescAbout The Truth.

"As a pastor and leader, I watched as we lost people. Our leadership team spoke of the ones who left with solemn words and judgmental hearts. It was as though we knew why they left, and what they should have done instead.

We wrote them off. At the first sign of non-conformity, we considered these “lost ones” to be deceived. We would encourage our people to break off fellowship with the ones who left. I’ve spent the last three years of my life reaching out to the un-churched, over-churched and cult-churched.

We, as the Church, need to do a better job reaching out to our brothers and sisters whom we’ve pushed away or whom we’ve watched walk away as we whispered “good-riddance” to their backs."
( Travis Klassen)

We Could Overwhelm The World

"If we dared to live beyond our self-concern; if we refused to shrink from being vulnerable; if we took nothing but a compassionate attitude toward the world; if we were a counterculture to our nation's lunatic lust for pride of place, power, and possessions; if we preferred to be faithful rather than successful, the walls of indifference to Jesus Christ would crumble. A handful of us could be ignored by society; but hundreds, thousands, millions of such servants would overwhelm the world."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

CAVE-MAN Jesus Discoveries

"In the winter of 1968, I lived in a cave in the mountains of the Zaragosa Desert in Spain. For seven months I saw no one, never heard the sound of a human voice. Hewn out of the face of the mountain, the cave towered six thousand feet above sea level. Each Sunday morning a brother from the village of Farlete below dropped off food, drinking water, and kerosene at a designated spot. Within the cave a stone partition divided the chapel on the right from the living quarters on the left. A stone slab covered with potato sacks served as a bed. The other furniture was a rugged granite desk, a wooden chair, a Sterno stove, and a kerosene lamp. On the wall of the chapel hung a three—foot crucifix. I awoke each morning at 2:00 and went into the chapel for an hour of nocturnal adoration.

On the night of December 13, during what began as a long and lonely hour of prayer, I heard in faith Jesus Christ say, ”For love of you I left my Father's side. I came to you who ran from me, fled me, who did not want to hear my name. For love of you I was covered with spit, punched, beaten, and affixed to the wood of the cross."

These words are burned on my life. Whether I am in a state of grace or disgrace, elation or depression, that night of fire quietly burns on.
"I looked at the crucifix for a long time, figuratively saw the blood streaming from every pore of his body, and heard the cry of his wounds: "This isn't a joke. It is not a laughing matter to me that I have loved you." The longer I looked, the more I realized that no man has ever loved me and no one ever could love me as he did. I went out of the cave, stood on the precipice, and shouted into the darkness, "Jesus, are you crazy? Are you out of your mind to have loved me so much?”

I learned that night what a wise old man had told me years earlier: "Only the one who has experienced it can know what the love of Jesus Christ is. Once you have experienced it, nothing else in the world will seem more beautiful or desirable. "
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Distracting Discipleship

"That is the question each of us must spell out for himself. Who is Jesus? What does discipleship today involve? Everything else is a distraction."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Pushing The Loyal Too Far

"Never push a loyal person to the point where they no longer give a damn"
(Unknown)

No Power No Fire Left - The Boring That Comes From Being Bored Of The Cross

"When Jesus Christ crucified is not proclaimed and lived out in love, the church is a bored and boring society. There is no power, no challenge, no fire. No change. We make drab what ought to be dramatic. A Christian is a lover of Christ and his Cross."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Muggers Did Not Kill Jesus- The Most Religious Did.

"But changing people is the point—weaning us from our worldly values. The apostle Paul was aware of the worldliness that had penetrated and gained ground within the church. He said there were enemies of the Cross of Christ in Galatia and Corinth, in Philippi and Rome—not so much among the waverers as among the most devout church members. Jesus did not die at the hands of muggers, rapists, or thugs. He fell into the well—scrubbed hands of priests and lawyers, statesmen and professors—society’s most respected members."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Celebrity Christianity Does Not Compute

"Dr. Martin Marty, Lutheran professor of church history at the University of Chicago, puts it this way: ”The problem is that Christianity and celebrity don't go together."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

What He Did Not Say Is The Scsndal

What a wise mouthful this is.....

"Recently a friend called me long distance to ask if I was upset by what a certain television evangelist said on his program about Roman Catholics. I replied that nothing he says upsets me; it's what he doesn't say that upsets me."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Holy Insecirity.... Is Best

"And Jesus demands nothing less than the placing of our own egos and desires on the Cross. Today many churches attempt to eliminate the risk and danger of this call. We cushion the risk and remove the danger of discipleship by drawing up a list of moral rules that give us security instead of holy insecurity."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Quibbling Christianity

"There is a frightening preoccupation with trivia in the American church today. With the gravity of a hanging judge, we quibble over the songs we sing and the songs we refuse to sing."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Taming Jesus.... Slaping Out The Fire He lite

Wow.... oh wow... Mister Catholic Priest..... "Christian piety has trivialized the passionate God of Golgotha. Christian art has turned the unspeakable outrage of Calvary into dignified jewelry. Christian worship has sentimentalized monstrous scandal into sacred pageant. Organized religion has domesticated the crucified Lord of glory, turned him into a tame symbol. Viewed as a church relic, the cross does not disturb our comfortable religiosity. But when the crucified, risen Christ, instead of remaining an icon, comes to life and delivers us over to the fire he came to light, he creates more havoc than all the heretics, secular humanists, and self—serving preachers put together."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Greater Vision..... Confining Denominationalism

"The grander my vision of God became, the smaller and more confining my denomination and my theology became." - (Karl Ingersoll)

No Time For Illusions

"The Cross is both the symbol of our salvation and the pattern of our lives. When our dogmatic beliefs and moral principles do not realize themselves in discipleship, then our holiness is an illusion. And the world has no time for illusions. Today the Christian community does not disturb the world."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Idiots Have It All Figured Out.

"The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life." (Vasudev)

Disciple - Or They Will Be Discipled

"If we don't apprentice people, the culture surely will."

(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Do We Really Think So?

The way we talk, serve, plan and act?

"Monday is as spiritually important as
Sunday."

(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

To head A New Diection You Gave To Turn Your Back To The Other

"It is impossible to travel south without turning one’s back on north." (A. W. TOZER)

"He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery."  (HAROLD WILSON)

Our nature lies in movement, complete calm is death.  (BLAISE PASCAL, PENSéES)

New Ideas Is The Easy Part....

"It's relatively easy to come up with new ideas; the really hard part is letting go of what worked two (or four or eight) years ago but will soon be out-of-date! We need to unlearn as much as we need to learn. We need to be remissionalized at a very deep level."

(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Here..... is Ok!

"The lesson which life constantly repeats is to "look under your feet.’ You are always nearer to the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars. Every place is the center of the world." — John Burroughs, Studies in Nature and Literature

Discipleship Is Not A Church Event Or Program- It's Person We Spend Time With.

"Disciples are not produced by programs, events, or even “discipleship studies.” Disciples are made in the context of authentic community by individuals through the power of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus told his disciples to “go and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19), he wasn’t teaching them a new program or process for growing the church. He was simply commissioning his followers to continue to do what they had seen him do and what he had taught them to do—to invest their lives into the people God gave them (to be “with” them), to invite them to follow Jesus, and to teach (disciple) them in the new way of life. (Luke 6:40). I believe real discipleship happens as one person invests into the life of another person."
(Making More Disciples By Making Less
by Joel Comiskey Group, article by Michael C. Mack)

Youth Say, "God Is Missing From Church" Like????

"According to the Barna Group, U.S. adults are almost evenly divided on whether church is at least somewhat important or is not important at all. While half (49%) say it is "somewhat" or "very" important, the other 51% say it is "not too" or "not at all" important. And only two in ten young adults asked said that church attendance was important. When young adults were asked why church was not important, a third said the church was "irrelevant," a third said the church was "hypocritical" and the last third cited the "moral failure of church leadership." Additionally, two out of ten young adults said "God was missing from church."

Forty-two percent of American adults who do attend church on a regular basis say they do so to get closer to God. Forty percent of adults said they find God elsewhere, and thirty-five percent said the church was not personally relevant to them."
( Churchleaders.com "Americans Are Divided on the Importance of Church". Staff Writer)

Leaveing For Ministry- Why?

We must go overseas, or the inner-city. .. Why not right where we are in the relatiinshios we have and as new ones unfold?

"The typical myth of ministry in the traditional church, is that we ‘must’ go somewhere else to minister the Gospel to others." (Let's Talk It's Relationships Podcast)

It SHOULD Have Worked. ....

"People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete — the things that should have worked but didn't, the things that once were productive and no longer are." - Peter Drucker

Being Masters Of Exclusion .....Is Simplicity

"Simplicity. To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relent- lessly prioritize."

(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Christians Talk About Swearing More Than Who's Dying From Famine and War

"We live in a culture where people are more offended by swear words and middle fingers than they are by famine warfare and the destruction of our environment." (Rsiffiaoi)

Talk Church Or Live Kingdom - Which Will It Be?

"Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice; church people often put church work above concerns of justice, mercy and truth. Church people think about how to get people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world. Church people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church change the world.
(Howard Snyder)

Shut Up And Let Us Leadership Professionnels Take It From Here

"Have you ever noticed with hierarchical authority that the way it typically shakes out is that a minority or small percentage of people claim to essentially have more knowledge and more ability than the combined collective wisdom and experience of all humankind? It comes off sounding like "l/we know best." Can't workers organize their own labor efforts? Can't teachers and/or parents organize the endeavor of educating their own children? Can't people collectively encourage and support one another in their spiritual and self—actualization interests and desires? Can't decent and caring human beings self- organize into a solidarity for addressing problems, needs, and injustices in their neighborhoods, communities. and cities? When did we get to the place where we hired people to do this stuff for us? When did we start outsourcing practically every shred of our humanity?"
(Palmer Palmer)

Hierarchical Aurhorty Outsources Our Humanity.

"Have you ever noticed with hierarchical authority that the way it typically shakes out is that a minority or small percentage of people claim to essentially have more knowledge and more ability than the combined collective wisdom and experience of all humankind? It comes off sounding like "l/we know best." Can't workers organize their own labor efforts? Can't teachers and/or parents organize the endeavor of educating their own children? Can't people collectively encourage and support one another in their spiritual and self-actualization interests and desires? Can't decent and caring human beings self- organize into a solidarity for addressing problems, needs, and injustices in their neighborhoods, communities. and cities?

When did we get to the place where we hired people to do this stuff for us? When did we start outsourcing practically every shred of our humanity?" (Jim Palmer)

Fundamental Erases People.

Fundamentalism erases people. 

"I’ve watched as men once alive with ideas and passion surrender their curiosity and intellectual integrity to conform to the ideological boundaries that will let them keep their jobs.  

I’ve seen women literally shrink—a pound at a time, a dream at a time—as they conform their bodies and their spirits to a strict ideal, as they try to make themselves acceptably small. 

I’ve seen the light go out in people’s eyes when they decide it’s safer to embrace a doctrine or a policy that their gut tells them is wrong than it is to challenge those who say it’s right. 

I’ve watched open minds close and tender hearts harden.

 I’ve seen people pretend to believe things they don’t actually believe and do things they don’t actually want to do, all in the name of conformity to God’s will, all in the name of sacrifice and submission. 

Fundamentalism erases people.  It erases their joy, their compassion, their instincts, their curiosity, their passion, their selves.  And then it celebrates this ghosting, this nulling and numbing, as a glorious “dying to the self,” just like Jesus demanded. 

But is this really what Jesus asked?"

(Rachel Held Evans)
Link to full article

Making Room For Good Asumptions To Work

"Take the bad assumptions out, and the good ones will do what they are meant to do: make us a whole lot better."
(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Learning Nothing - Fear to Question Our Assumptions

"We all know the story of the emperor who had no clothes. It takes a child to expose the collective spell myths have over us. So we too will need to approach this as a little child (Matt. 18:1 — 4). We need to be willing to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever the Spirit will lead us, and laugh at our own nakedness. If you are too protective of your own assumptions and myths, you will learn nothing."
(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Ruthless Honesty Is The Painful Road.

"Because conventional thinking serves very often to protect us from the painful job of thinking for ourselves, ruthless honesty is needed when exploring our myths and assumptions about the church. Further- more, many of us have bought deeply into the paradigm and have even gotten our sense of legitimacy from it, so we are personally involved; we might well find ourselves getting defensive here." (Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge") defensive here."

Flattered Or Provoked?

"I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked—goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Angry At Poverty And Senseless Suffering

He’s not just animated; he's angry. Because he knows that a lot of the Crisis in the developingworld can be avoided. Staring at people queuing up to die three to a bed, two on top and one underneath, in a hospital just outside of Lilongwe, Malawi, and knowing this doesn’t have to be so is too much for most of us. I am crushed. He is creative. He’s an economist who can bring to life statistics that were, after all, lives in the first place. He can look up from the numbers and see faces through the spreadsheets, families like his own that stick together on treks to the far ends of the world. He helps us make sense of what senseless really means: fifteen thousand Africans dying each and every day of preventa- ble, treatable diseases—AIDS, malaria, TB—for lack of drugs that we take for granted.

This statistic alone makes a fool of the idea many of us hold on to very tightly: the idea of equality. What is happening in Africa mocks our pieties. doubts our concern, and questions our commitment to that whole concept. Because if we're honest, there’s no way we could conclude that such mass death day after day would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else. Certainly not in North America, or Europe, or Japan. An entire continent bursting into flames? Deep down, if we really accept that their lives—African lives—are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. It's an uncomfortable truth."
(Bono writing about "Jeff" in Forward of,  The End Of Poverty. Jeffery Sachs)

Confident Uncertainty

"Spiritual maturity is moving from confident arrogance to thoughtful uncertainty." (Randal Arthur. Wisdom Hunter)

Books Can Change Your Life....

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

"One who has just come from reading perhaps one of the best English books will find how many with whom he can converse about it?.... he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence
about it, ..." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Who Reads ......?

"Even the college—bred and so—called liberally educated men here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintance with the English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who will know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to become acquainted with them."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Systems Were Never Designed To Protect The Common People

What a powerful insight.

".....surprising stories about why basic justice systems in the developing world came to be so dysfunctional. It turns out that when the colonial powers left the developing world a half a century ago, many of the laws changed but the law enforcement systems did not—systems that were never designed to protect the common people from violence but to protect the regime from the common people. These systems, it turns out, were never re- engineered."

(The Locust Effect: Why The End Of Povery Requires The End Of Violence. BY Gary A. Haugen
& Victor Boutros)

Corrupt Law Stops Progress of The Poor. Underming All Poverty Efforts.

"....... the failure to respond to such a basic need—to prioritize criminal justice systems that can protect poor people from common violence—has had a devastating impact on two great struggles that made heroic progress in the last century but have stalled out for the poorest in the twenty-first century: namely, the struggle to end severe poverty and the fight to secure the most basic human rights.

Indeed, for the global poor in this century, there is no higher-priority need with deeper and broader implications than the provision of basic justice systems that can protect them from the devastating ruin of common violence. Because as anyone who has tasted it knows, if you are not safe, nothing else matters.

The Locust Effect then is the
surprising story of how a plague of
lawless violence is destroying two
dreams that the world deeply
cherishes: the dream to end global
poverty and to secure the most
fundamental human rights for the poor. "

(The Locust Effect: Why The End Of Povery Requires The End Of Violence. BY Gary A. Haugen & Victor Boutros)

There Is No Rule Of Law For The Poor.

Most poor fear the abuse of the law and those administrators of it who use their authority for their own good. Heck I fear the law in most African Countries. 

"But perhaps even more surprising than the failure to prioritize the problem of violence against the poor is the way that those who do appreciate the problem ignore the most basic solution—and the solution they rely upon most in their own communities: law enforcement. As we shall see together, the poor in the developing world endure such extraordinary levels of violence because they live in a state of de facto lawlessness. That is to say, basic law enforcement systems in the developing world are so broken that global studies now confirm that most poor people live outside the protection of law."

(The Locust Effect: Why The End Of Povery Requires The End Of Violence. BY Gary A. Haugen
& Victor Boutros)

We Do Not Disturb The World Any More

"When our dogmatic beliefs and moral principles do not realize themselves in discipleship, then our holiness is an illusion. And the world has no time for illusions. Today the Christian community does not disturb the world."

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Tge Hound Of Heaven

"Down the nights and down the days
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

And the Hound of Heaven replies:

"Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me! Strange, piteous, futile thing

(Francis Thompson)

I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity.

Wow....

<blockquote>"Recently, I was given a copy of a note found written in the office of a young pastor in Zimbabwe, Africa, following his martyrdom for his faith in Jesus Christ. I quote his letter verbatim:

'I’m part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have the Holy Spirit’s power. The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made—I’m a disciple of his. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future is secure. I’m finished and done with low living, sight walking, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals. I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don’t have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean in his presence, walk by patience, am uplifted by prayer, and I labor with power. My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way rough, my companions are few, my Guide reliable, my mission clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the enemy, pander at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity. I won’t give up, shut up, let up, until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, preached up for the cause of Christ. I am a disciple of Jesus. I must go till he comes, give till I drop, preach till all know, and work till he stops me. And, when he comes for his own, he will have no problem recognizing me … my banner will be clear!.'"
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Hiding Christianity.

"Christianity has been buried inside the walls of churches and secured with the shackles of dogmatism. Let it be liberated to come into the midst of us and teach us freedom, equality and love." (Minna Canth)

People and Love.... Is What We Need...

"In order to commit ourselves to radical discipleship, in order to live with the signature of Jesus written on the pages of our lives, we need the strength and encouragement of other Christians. But our deepest need is for the inexhaustible power of the love of Christ. The miracle of Christianity is that this need is already met."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Fairh Explorers Still Discovering

"In a real sense, Jesus is our faith. As I wrote elsewhere, 'We are not travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.' We are faith—explorers of a country without borders, one we discover, little by little, not to be a place but a person."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Fear Is The Petty Life

"When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Simple, Simple, Simplicity

"Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb—nail."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Sucking The Marrow Of Life

"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan—like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and published its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."
( Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Discovering We Are Not Alive

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Loneliness Journey With Jesus? ????

"If anyone tells you that the life of prayer is one uninterrupted experience of being happy with Jesus, do not follow him. He is not a safe guide. Those who follow the Lamb know that there are stretches of darkness and loneliness and perplexity along the way, and they know that Jesus himself went that way." (Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998), Journey Into Joy)

It's Not Finished. ...

“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.” — DAN GILBERT

Living Awake....

"Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?"
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Why Calvinism Sucks!

"That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

What Are We Waking Up To?

"Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air—to a higher life than we fell asleep from; ...."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Believing To Little.....

"People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little."
(James Hilton. Lost Horizon)

Where Ordinary Men Do Not Go

"Most races have their promised land, and such legendary places must necessarily be somewhat inaccessible, hidden behind misty barriers where ordinary men do not go."
(Frank Kingdon Ward. The Riddle of The Tsangpo Gorges)

Dreaming Of Walking Off Stage

"Years earlier, I'd met an Englishman who had played the part of Lear for a theater company that traveled through villages in rural India. One day taking his role to heart, he simply walked off the stage and into the jungle, only emerging five years later. When I met him he'd become the director of Oxfam in the Indian city of Ahmedabad, but was still dreaming of returning to the forest."
(Ian Baker. The Heart Of The World: A Journey To the Last Secret place. Pg 20)

Morning Invitations From Nature

"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself."

(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Why Do Pastors Have To Be Sooo Good?

We would fire and never use a leader who sinned like David ir solomin or Tamar or Rahab. They never would get on our stage. Our Leaders and Preachers better be perfect.... better than us, not anything near as human as we are....

"Many fail to receive the blessings that come from ministering to others because of the belief that God uses only the perfect or the near perfect.... In my life as well as in Scripture, I have seen nothing but the opposite to be true. God often uses those who have major flaws or who have been through a great deal of pain to accomplish many vital tasks for his kingdom.... No one is too messed up for God to use."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Who's "Faith" Is It?

"Each of us bears the responsibility of responding to the call of Christ individually and committing ourselves to him personally. Do I believe in Jesus or in the preachers, teachers, and cloud of witnesses who have spoken to me about him? Is the Christ of my belief really my own or that of theologians, pastors, parents, and Oswald Chambers? No one—parents, friends, or church—can absolve us of this ultimate personal decision regarding the nature and identity of the son of Mary and Joseph. His question to Peter, Who do you say that I am? is addressed to every would-be disciple."

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Loves Proof And Loves Doubts

"When we love someone, a thousand arguments do not make one proof, nor do a thousand objections make one doubt."

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Implied Messages From The Church

I don't think they are only implied.  They are outright taught and imposed on people as so.

"10 Implied Messages of Institutional Church
Because The Medium Is The Message:

1. Church is a place, a location, a building.

2. Christianity happens in services, classes,
meetings, events, and programs.

3. What people need most is good information
about God.

4. "God’s work" needs organizational or corporate
infrastructure.

5. The more control the better; no telling what
people will do if left to themselves.

6. It's best you let us decide how to use and
distribute your money.

7. Depend on us for the spiritual formation of your
children; we are trained.

8. The bigger the church, the better.

9. People are more valuable and spiritual
depending on how often they attend and how
much they tithe.

10. Relationships happen in group meetings."
— Jim Palmer

It's That Simple? Not Movements But Loving Neighbors?

"I once dreamed of launching revolutions, sparking movements, mobilising the masses, and changing everything. Now I've learned the beauty and profound significance of simply loving my neighbor." (Jim Palmer)

Irish Curse.... Give Em A Limp God....

"May those who love us, love us. And those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts. And if he can't turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles, so that me will know them by their limping."
(Irish Curse)

We Kill Creativity in Institutions To Keep Status Quo

"Gordon McKenzie, who did much to foster the art of creative disruption at Hallmark, tells stories of going into classrooms full of kids at different levels. He would ask, "How many artists are there in the room? Would you please raise your hands?” He reports that the response was always the same: all first—grade kids considered themselves artists, in second grade about half of the kids put their hands up, in third grade about 30 percent of the kids identified themselves as artists, and so on. By the time he reached sixth—grade classes, no more than one or two put their hands up — and even then rather guardedly, fearing rejection by the other kids for identifying themselves as artists. The point he makes with this is that schools participate in the suppression of creative genius, and that something akin to this is at work in all organizations that suppress creativity in the cause of protecting the status quo.1 The loss of creative imagination is a quo. The loss of creative imagination is a direct result of trying to preserve the status quo in any organization, including the church.

The result of this suppression of the artful imagination is that churches and Christian organizations find themselves "stuck in a moment" (as Bono sings in the U2 song), and they struggle to break free from the limitations inherent in their current way of thinking."

(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

NEW Ideas Abound Letting Go Of The Old Idea Is The Real Challenge

"It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date. — ROGER VON OECH

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. — JOHN LOCKE, PHILOSOPHER

"Sometimes I try to think of six impossible things before breakfast" — ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Bullys Steal Much Of What We Give To The Poor.

"It turns out that you can provide all manner of goods and services to the poor, as good people have been doing for decades, but if you are not restraining the bullies in the community from violence and theft —as we have been failing to do for decades—then we are going to find the outcomes of our efforts quite disappointing."
(The Locust Effect: Why The End Of Povery Requires The End Of Violence. Gary A. Haugen & Victor Boutros)

What Is Nweded In War And Murder?

"None of the other things that people of good will had sought to share with these impoverished Rwandans over the years was going to matter if those good people could not stop the machetes from hacking them to death. Moreover, none of those good things (the food, the medicine, the education, the shelter, the fresh water, the micro-loan) was going to stop the hacking machetes. The locusts of predatory violence had descended—and they would lay waste to all that the vulnerable poor had otherwise struggled to scrape together to secure their lives. Indeed, not only would the locusts be undeterred by the poor's efforts to make a living, they would be fattened and empowered by the plunder."
(The Locust Effect: Why The End Of Povery Requires The End Of Violence. BY Gary A. Haugen
& Victor Boutros)

Your Friends Matter Because They Crucify You

"Jesus wasn't crucified because he befriended sinners. He was crucified as a heretic because he unfriended the self-righteous." -(Karl Ingersoll.  Fredericton N.B. 24/7 network)

We Cling To A Very Different God Than Jesus Revealed

"Many Christians remain afraid, for they still cling to an idea of God very different from that preached by Jesus. They remain in Haran with their old belief system intact. They believe they can save themselves by holding still and not breathing or by embarking on fasts, vigils, or heroic enterprises, hoping to coax approbation from God.

Again and again Jesus stated that fear is the enemy of life.
”Don’t be afraid; just believe" (Luke 8:50). ”Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32).
”Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid” (Matthew 14:27).

Fear breeds a deadening caution, a holding back, a stagnant waiting until people no longer can recall what they are waiting for or saving themselves for. When we fear failure more than we love life; when we are dominated by thoughts of what we might have been rather than by thoughts of what we might become; when we are haunted by the disparity between our ideal self and our real self; when we are tormented by guilt, shame, remorse, and self—condemnation, we deny our faith in the God of love. God calls us to break camp, abandon the comfort and security of the status quo, and embark in perilous freedom on the journey to a new Canaan."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Lancing Infected Religious Beliefs

"Jesus lanced the infection of religious belief that had lost its soul and did not even know it. The Pharisees had distorted the image of God into some remote bookkeeper who is constantly snooping around after sinners (and one day will nail us if our accounts are not in order). The Pharisees were so busy refining and finessing the formulas of religion, so assiduous in studying what they believed, that they forgot the reality their beliefs signified. They had believed for so long but their faith had dulled."  (Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Abandon A Cantankerous Worm Eaten Faith

"When God called Abraham to abandon the security of the world familiar to him, he also asked Abraham to forsake his polytheistic religious beliefs. All his previous concepts of God faded away. The same process is necessary for us. When we encounter the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ, we must revise all our previous thinking about God. Jesus, as the revealer of the Godhead, defines God as love. In light of this revelation, we have to abandon the cankerous, worm-eaten structure of legalism, moralism, and perfectionism that corrupts the Good News into an ethical code rather than a love affair."    (Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

From Belief To Faith

"We have to pass definitively beyond beliefs to faith. Yes, we are called to believe in Jesus. But our belief summons us to something greater, to faith in him. Faith that will force us to pursue the mind of Christ, to embrace a lifestyle of prayer, unselfishness, goodness, and involvement in building his kingdom, not our own."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Philanthropy Over Rated... Note Consistently Kind Men

" Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it. .....

I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Hacking The Branches Of Evil.... Rather Than The Root

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve."

(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Good Gone Bad

"There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Keeking Your Course

"We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course."

(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Find Your In Path In Life

"One young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited some acres, told me that he thought he should live as I did, if he had the means. I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account....  but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead.  The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Living Simply Is Great Freedom.

"In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; ..." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden ) 

I Have Nothing To Hurt....Nothing To See.

"I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should look in. The moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet;..."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden ) 

Pretendinf To Disown

"If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him, ...."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden ) 

Doubt- But Don't Doubt What We Say....

"Daniel Taylor writes: The secular world of ideas plays the doubting game almost exclusively and is usually scornful of anyone who doesn't. Ironically, however, the church also plays this game to a great extent. The mystery of the gospel, the paradox of the incarnation, and the wondrous enigma of grace are freeze—dried into a highly rationalized and/ or authoritarian system of theologies, codes, rules, prescriptions, orders of service, and forms of church government. Everything is written down, everything is organized, so that all can be certain and those in error detected;....."
...as quoted in....
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Set Me On Fire And Watch Me Burn

"I just set myself on fire, and people come from miles around to watch me burn." JOHN WESLEY

"Set me alight. . . . We’IIpunch a hole right through the night." BONO

Waters Value Is When Lost

"When the well is dry, we know the worth of water." (Benjamin Franklin)

The Pastor Taught Me He's Not Needed?

"A pastor's job is to literally help everyone understand he is not needed. Working himself out of a job." (Hans Funk and Daren Hufford. Free Believers Podcast March 6th Asv9ice for Pastors)

Starving For Luxuries

"Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries; and I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water only."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden ) 

We Can Live More Simply.

I learned from my two years‘ experien- ce that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have made a satisfactory

Better To Drown The Egyptian Pharaohs?

"The religion and civilization which are barbaric and heathenish build splendid temples; but what you might call Christianity does not. Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. I might possibly invent some excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it. As for the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or the United States Bank. It costs more than it comes to. The mainspring is vanity.....

As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made. Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East—to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them—who were above such trifling."
"
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden ) 

Why Is Building So Important To Us?

Churches are the same.

"To what end, pray, is so much stone hammered? In Arcadia, when I was there, I did not see any hammering stone. Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. I love better to see stones in place." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden ) 

Who Ya Toiling For?

"A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince."

(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Thoreau Would Probably Not Own A Tractor

"I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer. Men and oxen exchange work; but if we consider necessary work only, the oxen will be seen to have greatly the advantage, their farm is so much the larger. Man does some of his part of the exchange work in his six weeks of haying, and it is no boy's play. Certainly no nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of philosophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals."

(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Crooked Bent To Live In A Cabin.

"I was more indepen- dent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

So Much For Saving For Retirement

"This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the English- man who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet."

(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Illusions Of Academia

With rising student debt and few jobs secured after.... Thoreau was on to something even then.

"As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Thoreau On When Education Goes Wrong.

"To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation!—why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

Life Is The Best Teacher About Life. Knowing How Your Bread is Made.

"How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics. If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where anything is professed and practised but the art of life;—to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what Vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month—the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this—or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rodgers‘ penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?... "

(Henry David Thoreau. Walden )

More Than A Sermon Is Needed Sometimes.... Most Of The Time.

"What is it like, exactly, to be pressed up against the back wall of this church with panic on every side from your terrified family as the steel, blood—soaked machetes hack their way to you through your screaming and slaughtered neighbors? What eventually emerged for me, and changed me, was a point of simple clarity about the nature of violence and the poor. What was so clear to me was the way these very impoverished Rwandans at their point of most desperate need, huddled against those advancing machetes in that church, did not need someone to bring them a sermon, or food, or a doctor, or a teacher, or a micro-loan. They needed someone to restrain the hand with the machete—and nothing else would do."
(The Locust Effect: Why The End Of Povery Requires The End Of Violence. BY Gary A. Haugen
& Victor Boutros)

Genocide of Rwanda

"It was my first massacre site. Today the skulls are all neatly stacked on shelves, but when I first encountered them, they definitely were not. They were attached to bodies—mostly skeletal remains—in a massive mess of rotting human corpses in a small brick church in Rwanda." (The Locust Effect: Why The End Of Povery Requires The End Of Violence. BY Gary A. Haugen & Victor Boutros)

Church Sealed Behind Clergy Prision....

"The power of the body of Christ has been sealed and sanctioned off in clergy prison for too long in church history. Its time for another jailbreak. There were no exclusive "leading" figures who conducted the ministry of Jesus in the New Testament. All of Jesus' resurrection- life- filled followers bore witness to the living Christ through sacrament and service." (I Am A Follower. Leonard Sweet. Pg 147)

Does the Gospel Do US Any Good?

"The gospel will persuade no one unless it has so convicted us that we are transformed by it."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

ON The Outs With The Wong Crowd

"Jesus wasn't crucified because he befriended sinners. He was crucified as a heretic because he unfriended the self-righteous." (Karl Ingersoll.  Fredericton, NB)

Why Do I Have To Have It All Figured Out?

"The journey of the man who would become known as Abraham is a paradigm of all authentic faith. His is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, and not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

A man grows old when he deserts his ideal.

"Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn’t grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul. Preoccupations, fears, doubts, and despair are the enemies which slowly bow us toward earth and turn us into dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good, and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature, and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man’s soul. "(Gen. Douglas MacArthur)

Humble Witness.

"However hidden and undramatic your witness may be, I pray that you will be daring enough to be different, humble enough to make mistakes, courageous enough to get burnt in the fire, and real enough to help others see that prose is not poetry, speech is not song, and tangibles, visibles, and perishables are not adequate for beings signed with the blood of the Lamb."
( Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Grace Makes Me Move..... Or is It "Be"?

"Discipleship is our response to grace." (Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

You would Not Follow Your Leaders If You Knew ahow Broken They Are

They are as hurt and powerless as you are in many instances. They know more Jesus stuff, but many are no mote connected than you are, or can be to Jesus. This is not to disparage leadership, but ot is a reminder to consider who we are following.

"One of the stunning lessons of the Bible is God’s free use of fragile human beings to accomplish his purpose. He does not always choose the holy and devout or even the emotionally well—balanced. The venerable Liebermann, a powerful nineteenth—century missionary, was a manic—depressive who could not walk across a bridge without a compulsive desire to jump off! “The Holy Spirit is the bearer of gifts and these gifts are sometimes lavished in peculiar places."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Crucified Men & Women

"Somehow we must lose our life in order to find it. Christianity preaches not only a crucified God, but also crucified men and Women."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Powerlessness- The Going Down Journey

"At the dawning of the twenty-first century, what separates the committed from the uncommitted is the depth and quality of our love for Jesus Christ. The superficial among us build bigger barns in the euphoria of a prosperity gospel; the trendy follow the latest fad and try to hum their way to heaven; the defeated are haunted by ghosts from the past.

But the victorious minority, unintimidated by the cultural patterns of the lockstepping majority, live and celebrate as though Jesus were near—near in time, near in place—the witness of our motives, our speech, and our behavior. As indeed he is.

Fidelity to the Word will take us along the path of downward mobility (Henri Nouwen’s famous phrase) in the midst of an upwardly mobile world. We will find ourselves not on the path to power but on the path to powerlessness; not on the road to success but on the road to servanthood; not on the broad road of praise and popularity but on the narrow road of ridicule and rejection."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

A Religion I Don't Want

"I want neither a blood-’n’-guts religion that would make Clint Eastwood, not Jesus, our hero; nor a speculative religion that would imprison the gospel in the halls of academia; nor a noisy, feel-good religion that is a naked appeal to emotion. I long for passion, intelligence, and compassion in a church without ostentation, gently beckoning to the world to come and enjoy the peace and unity we possess because of the Spirit in our midst."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Church Poured Put In Service

"The greatest need for our time is for the church to become what it has seldom been: the body of Christ with its face to the world, loving others regardless of religion or culture, pouring itself out in a life of service, offering hope to a frightened world, and presenting itself as a real alternative to the existing arrangement. “The church that is worthy of the name is a band of people in which the love of God has broken the spell of demons and false gods and which is now making a dent in the world.”

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Skeletons On The Calvary Road.

I hope some of mine are there.

"Littered along the Calvary road will lie the skeletons of our egos, the corpses of our fantasies of control, and the shards of self-righteousness, self-indulgent spirituality, and unfreedom."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Every Believer Has 100% Of The Church DNA In Them.

"........ missiologist Donald McGavran once said that “in every apple there is an orchard.” If we could just realize this amazing piece of truth — that every believer carries the full possibility of an ecclesia, ..."
(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Free From Judging Free Yo Give Mercu

Freedom from Judging, Freedom for mercy. This is so difficult for me to live.

"We spend an enormous amount of energy making up our minds about other people. Not a day goes by without somebody doing or saying something that evokes in us the need to form an opinion about him or her. We hear a lot, see a lot, and know a lot. The feeling that we have to sort it all out in our minds and makejudgments about it can be quite oppressive. The desert fathers said thatjudging others is a heavy burden, while being judged by others is a light one. Once we can let go of our need to judge others, we will experience an immense inner freedom. Once we are free from judging, we will be also free for mercy. Let's remember Jesus‘ words: "Do notjudge, and you will not bejudged" (Matthew 7:1). -- (Henri Nouwen)

Simple Life.....

"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself." (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

I Want To Be MUCH Better At This.

Towards a Nonjudgmental life

"One of the hardest spiritual tasks is to live without prejudices. Sometimes we aren't even aware how deeply rooted our prejudices are. We may think that we relate to people who are different from us in colour, religion, sexual orientation, or lifestyle as equals, but in concrete circumstances our spontaneous thoughts, uncensored words, and knee-jerk reactions often reveal that our prejudices are still there. Strangers, people different than we are, stir up fear, discomfort, suspicion, and hostility. They make us lose our sense of securityjust by being "other." Only when we fully claim that God loves us in an unconditional way and look at "those other persons" as equally loved can we begin to discover that the great variety in being human is an expression ofthe immense richness of God's heart. Then the need to prejudge people can gradually disappear. -- Henri Nouwen

To Busy To Care.......

"For most of us our depth of compassion diminishes the busier our life gets..." (Neil Cole)

We Made The Church Market

Now we are required to lay in the bed we made......

"People treat church and church programs like the mall,” said a church leader. “All they want is the latest shiny object and ‘what’s in it for me.’”

As church memberships decline and more people slip out the back door to try the church across town, church leaders look for someone or something to blame. And there may be some truth to the charge that consumerism is contributing to sagging church commitment.

But I suspect that the church itself has played right in to this sense of consumerism. If people are treating churches like stores in the mall, maybe it’s because churches are acting like stores in the mall."
(Church Trapped by Consumerism. by Thom Schultz. Churchleaders.com)

A "Goodie" Religion

“Christianity seems at first to be about morality, rules, guilt, and virtue, yet it leads you out of that, into something beyond.” (C.S. Lewis)

Christianity With No Jesus

“There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.”

~ C.S. Lewis

Slaves For Life To Own A House

"In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a Very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a Village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live." 
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Unlearning Is As Critical As Learning

This theme of "unlearning" came up in several places this week. What we unlearn is a more critical and needed act.....

"Our soul's discovery is utterly crucial, momentous, and of pressing importance for each of us and for the world. We do not “make” or “create” our souls; we just “grow” them up. We are the clumsy stewards of our own souls. We are charged to awaken, and much of the work of spirituality is learning how to stay out of the way of this rather natural growing and awakening. We need to unlearn a lot, it seems, to get back to that foundational life which is “hidden in God” (Colossians 3:3). Yes, transformation is often more about unlearning than learning, ......"
(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward : A Spurituality For The Two Halfs Of Life )

Just Remain Screwed......

time. Yet any glass through which we see is always made of human hands, like mine. All spiritual language is by necessity metaphor and symbol. The Light comes from elsewhere, yet it is necessarily reflected through those of us still walking on the journey ourselves. As Desmond Tutu told me on a recent trip to Cape Town, “We are only the light bulbs, Richard, and our job is just to remain screwed in!”

Lige Is More Than Getting Attached To Tge Right Project

"I am driven to write because after forty years as a Franciscan teacher, working in many settings, religions, countries, and institutions, I find that many, if not most, people and institutions remain stymied in the preoccupations of the first half of life. By that I mean that most people's concerns remain those of establishing their personal (or superior) identity, creating various boundary markers for themselves, seeking security, and perhaps linking to what seem like significant people or projects. These tasks are good to some degree and even necessary. We are all trying to find what the Greek philosopher Archimedes called a “lever and a place to stand” so that we can move the world just a little bit. The world would be much worse off if we did not do this first and important task. But, in my opinion, this first-half-of-life task is no more than finding the starting gate. It is merely the warm-up act, not the full journey. It is the raft but not the shore." (Richard Rohr. Falling Upward: A Spurituality For The Two halfs Of Life)

The church doesn’t consist of its institutions; it consists of the people of God.

"One of the major keys in reimagining church is unleashing all of God’s people as missional agents of the King, commissioned to represent him in every sphere and domain of society. The institutional paradigm, because it so identifies the church with its formal institutions (buildings, clergy, programs, and so on), effectively blinds its members to the profoundly missional capacities of the people of God as a kingdom of priests.
The church doesn’t consist of its institutions; it consists of the people of God. We know this in our theology, but our practice is almost entirely at odds with this belief. We have so identified the church with its rituals, theology, denominational templates, symbols, and professional clergy that we can’t see this remarkable truth."
(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Some Worm In His Head Affecting Productivity

"I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again; and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor. Never- theless, we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

We Need A New Suit Only When Molting Out Old Self..

"Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Be Something.... says Thoreau

"All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

New Cloth... Same Old Untramsformed Character.

"Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet—if a hero ever has a valet—bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to soirées and legislative balls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? ....
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes."

(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Patched Pants Or A Broken Leg....

"I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this—Who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Wooden Horse..... Without A Conscience.

"Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on. Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate to lay them aside....... No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. "
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

The End Is The Same.....

"For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Deaf To The Soul

"But you learn to smother the living breathing soul, go deaf to it, and this violence to the self is what is commonly called sanity in the places where I have lived.'' (Philip 0 Ceallaigh, Walking to the Danube)

Cange Is Not Miracle.

"This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Cange Is Not Miracle.

"This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Repent Good Behaviour?

"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man—you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind—I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Look Through Anothers Eyes

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Little Has Been Tried????,

"But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Conventional Wisdom Is Sometimes Not Wisdom

This quote made me laugh out loud. Guess some conventional wisdom might not be wistom after all....

"One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with"; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable- made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Are All Elderly People Wise?

"What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a—going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

There Is No Other Choice - No Other Path

"..... it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields."

(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Life Of Desperation... Weaving Toilet Seat Covers

"Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Self-Slavery

".... but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Slough Of Debt.....

"Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough,.....
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

A Frivolous Course Of Life.

"Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine."

(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

A Fool's Life.....Of Treasure

"But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Pushing A Barn Through Life

"I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty,..." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

When Life Is Lived Like Penance....

"I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

No More Church Guns

"The past few years have been quite a journey for me when it comes to church life. I've been all over the place, from a traditional church pastor to a house church advocate. During that time, I've written some fairly harsh things on this blog. Much of it has been aimed at institutional Christianity. While some of the things needed to be said, the tone I used was often not what it should have been. Well, no more.

I'm metaphorically putting the guns away as it pertains to church stuff. I no longer have any desire to fight against all the problems in the church. I'd rather focus on what we, as the body of Christ, can accomplish together. Unity in Christ is going to be one of my main themes going forward." (A Pilgrim's Progress. by Eric)

Stupidly Rich Miserly Madness

Hetty Green, called the witch of wall street, died in 1914 as the richest woman in the world with an estate worth between $100 and $200 million dollars (that’s a lot of money now, but much, much more then). Though wealthy beyond belief, she lived like a pauper. She would eat cold oatmeal because she refused to pay the expense to heat the water. She would rarely pay the expense to clean her clothes so she was always dressed in worn and dark clothing looking like she came off the streets. When her son injured his leg, she took so long looking for a free clinic for his care that eventually he lost his leg due to infection.  

What We Must Stop Doing Is The Real Issue.

"Perhaps the greatest impediment to the church’s work in the world is not discovering what to do but what to stop doing. So much of what happens in the church is programs and methods designed to put something into the disciples. But as we’ve seen in the previous post, we have the fullness of Christ and all His gifts already within us. So, what’s needed instead of a “putting in” is a drawing out of what Jesus has already placed there." (Neil Cole. Blog)

We Grow Best By What We Jettison. .

"The sign of a true learner is not just the knowledge he or she has accumulated, but also the ideas that have been jettisoned. Sometimes the discard pile is as interesting as the growing library of new ideas. You can tell a lot about a person by what he or she has tossed aside. When someone’s point of view doesn’t change across a lifetime of education, I tend to distrust that such a person has really learned anything. Can you live your whole life listening to God and never change your point of view? I think not. That would assume that you are already right about everything and have nothing to learn or change. I cannot trust such a person.... 
In the church, our default settings must be changed if we are ever going to release a movement. What got us here will never lead usthere. Unlearning is as important as learningfor empowering the missional church. In fact, the lessons we must learn are really quite simple, but the ones we must unlearn are complex and deeply embedded in how most churches are assembled and operated. " (Neil Cole... Blog, March 2014)

It Takes All Kinds..... Yep...

"A species in which everyone was General Patton would not succeed, any more than would a race in which everyone was Vincent van Gogh. I prefer to think that the planet needs athletes, philosophers, sex symbols, painters, scientists; it needs the warmhearted, the hardhearted, the coldhearted, and the weakhearted. It needs those who can devote their lives to studying how many droplets of water are secreted by the salivary glands of dogs under which circumstances, and it needs those who can capture the passing impression of cherry blossoms in a fourteen-syllable poem or devote twenty-five pages to the dissection of a small boy’s feelings as he lies in bed in the dark waiting for his mother to kiss him goodnight.... Indeed the presence of outstanding strengths presupposes that energy needed in other areas has been channeled away from them." —ALLEN SHAWN

Valueless Priorities And Becoming Grumpy Old Men....

"Nevertheless, as perhaps has become all too evident, I no longer have any time for political correctness and circumlocution. I am appalled by the extent to which our contemporary lives are attention disordered, informed by valueless priorities, and affected by posturing, visionless politicians, by shallow media, and by our pervasive ignorance of history and the world around us. So, yes, I’ve become a grumpy old man."
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

How Has Being Kidnapped My Ak Qaeda Changed Your Life ?

Wow, is all I can say over this quote...... There is so much I would like to wrote and say after reading this ........

"On occasion I am asked how the experience has changed my outlook on life. The answer is, superficially, hardly at all. More profoundly, perhaps a little more so, although that is not terribly evident in my day-to-day behaviour. In the wretched months described in this book I didn’t really believe that I would be given a chance to answer this question, but I convinced myself that if I did, everything would be different. But it wasn’t and isn’t. I’m fortunate to be among those who have suffered such experiences without becoming afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder—at least, not so far—but I regret that I’ve seen most of my good intentions dissipate over the months following my release. I’m ashamed to find myself muttering about the driving habits of the guy in front of me, or how long it takes to get served at the post office, but those reactions are more rote than real. Nevertheless, as perhaps has become all too evident, I no longer have any time for political correctness and circumlocution. I am appalled by the extent to which our contemporary lives are attention disordered, informed by valueless priorities, and affected by posturing, visionless politicians, by shallow media, and by our pervasive ignorance of history and the world around us. So, yes, I’ve become a grumpy old man. I now find it more difficult to share the pet peeves of friends and members of my family. But nothing is more important to me than those people. My friend Allan Gotlieb talks of QTR (quality time remaining), and the nurturing of mine has become a lot more important than ever it was. Now it is mostly about spending it well with my family and those close friends. I doubt that, absent this searing experience, I would have understood this to the extent I do now. I know with surprising confidence that every day is a gift and should be honoured as such and fearlessly, triumphantly celebrated."
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Stockholm Syndrome.... With Al Qaeda Impossible.

"Inevitably, and always surprisingly, I am asked whether I came to “like” any of our captors. Usually this is at least in part a query about whether we were to any extent afflicted with the much-documented Stockholm syndrome, whereby captives come to empathize with their captors. I’m afraid, though, that the answer is neither nuanced nor complicated. The gulf between who and what they are—between their beliefs, methods, and purposes and mine—was simply too wide to allow for any possibility of friendship or empathy. After seven years as a hostage of Islamic jihad in Lebanon, Terry Anderson nailed it just right when he replied to the same line of questioning by saying that the minds of his captors were alien to him. We spent the lion’s share of our time in captivity with Omar One. He had an intriguing background and was an entertaining storyteller, but how could that trump the fact that he had constantly threatened our lives and caused us and our families to suffer such extreme anxiety? How could we be friendly with a rabid zealot who almost frothed at the mouth in one discussion about the United Nations, as he spoke longingly of donning the “martyr’s vest” and joining a meeting of international delegates discussing woman’s rights and equality between the sexes? One who was sufficiently unhinged to espouse a version of the infamous “blood libel,” an anti-Semitic calumny that dates back to the first century? Omar’s version launched from the unfortunate contemporary fiasco that resulted in the government of Chad taking legal proceedings against six members of the French NGO L’Arche de Zoé in 2007 for abducting over a hundred children. With flagrant disregard for just about everything, the NGO had taken children from the war-torn areas of eastern Chad and Darfur, supposedly but not necessarily orphans, and sought to dispatch them to “good homes” in France. This, sadly, is more or less fact. According to Omar, however, their real purpose was to import young Muslim children from Darfur and Chad to be sacrificed in secret Jewish blood ceremonies. He told us—and there is no question in my mind but that this lycée-educated, well-travelled, multilingual individual believed every word—that these children were placed in transparent drums on a stage before rapt audiences of Jews across Europe. Spikes would then be introduced into the barrels until they reached the children, and as the poor wretches writhed in an effort to escape, more spikes would be added. As the barrels slowly filled with blood it would be siphoned off by ingenious plumbing to a bakery below the stage, where it would be added to matzo cakes to be consumed by the audience during dark religious rites. How could there be any kind of bond with people who thought like that?"
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)
 

Canada & RCMP Woefully Ignorant Of Terrorism And International Threats.

"This book is not the place to engage more broadly the current and recurring woes of the RCMP. Suffice it to say that any suggestion it is an organization suffering a deep leadership crisis and in need of radical repair, and a fundamental re-examination of its mandate, would meet with my hearty agreement. The thought that these posturing naïfs are the locus of knowledge and expertise regarding international kidnappings and are responsible within the Canadian government for managing and negotiating complex international hostage crises, to say nothing of playing an essential part in countering terrorist threats to Canada, simply chills the soul. They are not, in my view, up to such tasks, and the sooner the government comes to understand this stark reality the better it will be for all Canadians."
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Our Diplomats & Families Sent In To Danger And Treated Like Trash

"On 23 February, in a briefing at Foreign Affairs during which Mary asked for confirmation of the accuracy of media reports that suggested AQIM had made ransom demands, a senior RCMP officer interrupted, pointing his finger across the table to where she sat, and gratuitously snapped, “As long as I am in charge of this investigation not one cent will be paid for the release of these high muckety-mucks.” Her confidence in the RCMP, or at least its senior management, was finally and irrevocably shattered."

(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Westerners Think They Understand The World. Things They Just Don't Get.

"RCMP officials were incapable of seeing our situation outside the narrow and highly distorted prism of a Canadian criminal investigation; beyond, that is, the compilation of a case file, the amassing of forensic evidence. For “the Force” it was exclusively about bringing Mokhtar Belmokhtar and his accomplices to court in Mali or even in Canada, securing a conviction, and putting him and the members of his katiba in jail. The RCMP officers were neither capable of understanding nor much interested in the broader geopolitical complexities and implications of the fraught and dangerous situation in which we found ourselves, even though many of those complexities were quite capable of ending our lives. The first Canadians I spoke to following our release were RCMP officers, and they interviewed me endlessly: on the plane from Gao to Bamako, in the Radisson Hotel in Bamako, between tests at the hospital in Germany, and as soon as I set foot back in Ottawa. They were not interested in learning how to defeat Al Qaeda, how to protect Canadians working in that part of the world from experiencing what we had just been through, or how to rescue the two remaining captives. Their exclusive interest was forensic—whom had I brushed up against and when during my captivity so they could search for and catalogue the relevant DNA on the sleeve of my tattered shirt in order to build a case for the criminal prosecution of our AQIM kidnappers. I believe that, instead, we ought to have been using most of that energy, those resources, and every available moment to work with others simply to destroy the threat that AQIM represents. Our misadventure took place dramatically far beyond the RCMP’s known world and bore little resemblance to a kidnapping in Canada. Nevertheless, the RCMP jealously defended its turf as “the Canadian government’s hostage negotiator,” insisting that this authority applied to Tombouctou as fully as it did to Regina and that its expertise was equally applicable to either, when so manifestly it was not. Its officers consistently asserted that theirs was “the lead department” (and while some have denied this was the case, there were certainly no other evident contenders), but never understood the extent to which West Africa was not western Canada. All this said, a number of individual RCMP officers worked selflessly and tirelessly and to the very best of their abilities, risking their health and abandoning their families, to secure our freedom, and I owe them a debt of gratitude."

(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)
  

Angry At Canada...?

"He was sure as hell angry at Canada. He began by reiterating how perfidious Canada had been throughout the negotiations, stressing the lies he said they had been told and the unfulfilled promises made. He repeatedly insisted, stabbing his finger at me, “They do not want you back. They do not care the least about you. They hope you will stay with us, or, more likely, that we will kill you.” But—and then I suddenly paid close attention—”We will not do that. We have decided to free you, and by God, Canada will feel our wrath.” And I have no idea what else he said but it went on for some long time." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Self Delusion Must Go

"Prophetic thinking is the necessary capacity for healthy self-criticism, the ability to recognize you own dark side, as the prophets did for Israel. Without that, most people (and most of religion) never move beyond tribal thinking, which is the beliefthat they and their group are the best, and really the ''only.’’ It creates narcissism instead of any possibility of enlightenment." (Richard Rohr)

Limited Debate

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” ― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good