The Unfinished Story of Africa - A Story I'm Not Ready To Tell.

It's how I feel about Africa..... a story can't be written yet, because it is unfinished....

"..... I was approached by two American agents who wanted me to turn it into a book. It is not the first time this suggestion has been made to me. I have always replied that I am not ready and that I am in the middle of a story that is not finished..... This is what I said once again. I am too busy to live my life in Mali to be able to stand back and write about it. .... So I wrote a couple of chapters and spent quite some time on this, without much conviction however. My attempt was rejected by the agent that had been soliciting me . Apparently my effort lacked narrative drive. It may well be true and I am the first to acnowledge that I am not ready to write about my Mali life yet, but nevertheless rather annoying ". (Sophie.  Djenne Djenno. Swedish lady running a mud hotel in Djenne Mali)

Sinking.... While saving the World.

Peace Corps worker in an Ecuadorian village....  I've had days and weeks where this kind of feeling like this in West Africa. Can't explain it. Just have to live through it. Time seems to be about the only thing to get through. No cheap tricks, mind games, or reasoning take the feelings away. 

"During one six-week period when I was playing big role of Big Daddy, the Peace Corps Volunteer with the answers, the whole experience turned into a rout. Toward the end, instead of running all over comforting and advising people I was moping around the house finding deep and personal meanings in Hamlet’s famous soliloquy. I was hoping that someone would pick me up and gently rock me back and forth for a few hours.

What happened? It all began quietly- a time of vague depression, dissatisfaction, sadness, a neurotic apprehension. For one thing, I guess: I was beginning to get inside the town, becoming very emotionally involved with everything. For another, and mainly, I wasn’t eating very well. I was eating better than anyone in town, with imported tomatoes and bread from Esmeraldas; I had the money to buy a can of tuna fish every evening—that party food which was reserved for days of fiesta —and I was buying eggs, too. I was probably the only person in town who was eating eggs, ... I knew what the trouble was, but I was unable to rationalize my way out of the situation, and life darkened day by day."
(Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen)

Poverty Locks The World From Untapped Human Potential And Freedom From War

".... you may feel, as we do, that poverty is humankind’s greatest shame. But if you consider the matter for a moment, we’re sure you would also agree that the scope and persistence of poverty doesn’t just raise questions about the moral character of the human race. There are practical considerations, too. Consider, for example, the horrendous waste of human talent. How many scientists, physicians, teachers, business innovators, gifted artists, and brilliant community leaders might emerge from the bottom billions if they were freed from the shackles of poverty? How much might all our lives be enriched if the 2.7 billion people who face the constraints of severe poverty today were given opportunities to fulfill their potential? Consider, too, the prospect that the end of wide-scale poverty might lower the level of conflict in the world. Ethnic hatred, intercommunal violence, and religious extremism flourish in communities where few people are well educated. Moreover, the lack of economic opportunities and the institutionalized oppression prevalent in many political systems go hand in hand with violence, terrorism, revolution, and war."

(The Business Solution To Poverty: Paul Polak & Mal Warwick)

Discolored: Is Any Human Discolored?

"Brister Freeman, ...... he had some title to be called—"a man of color," as if he were discolored."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Walnuts: A Living Illustration Of Slavery

"East of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, of Concord village, who built his slave a house, and gave him permission to live in Walden Woods;—Cato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last."

(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Where Is The Party: Sour-Faced Saints With Derry Outcomes

Sour-faced Saints.... Got to love the phrase "orgies of joy ;-)..... and "Preoccupied with feasts"....  we shall have feasts... yes feasts...... worth a read to the end.

"A fifth dimension of paschal spirituality: It is joyful and optimistic. It is anchored in hope. It eagerly looks forward to the final glorification of the Second Coming. The cry of the Christian is, “There’s gonna be a great day!” .......  The true Christian is the lover separated from his beloved—the day of reunion cannot come too soon. Such is the happy, hopeful, buoyant spirit that characterizes paschal spirituality. It should set the tone of our life in Christ, day by day.
We ought to be preoccupied with parties, banquets, feasts, and merriment. We ought to give ourselves over to veritable orgies of joy because of our belief in resurrection. We ought to attract people to our faith quite literally by the fun there is in being a Christian. Unfortunately, however, we too readily become somber, serious, and pompous. We fly in the face of our own tradition because we are afraid of wasting time or getting attached. In the words of Teresa of Avila, “from silly devotions and sour-faced saints, spare us, O Lord.”
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

A Humanity Of Charred Wood.

“The wood must be charred before He can limn with it.”
(Francis Thompson)

A Lie That Make People Hate God... And I Don't Blame Them

The "Prosperity Gospel" creates a lie about God, a God people love to hate..... and I can't blame them...

"Dragging his I.V. pole down a hospital corridor, Colson was asked by a Hindu visiting his desperately ill son whether or not God would heal the boy if he, the father, were to be born again. “He said he had heard things like that on television. As I listened, I realized how arrogant health-and-wealth religion sounds to suffering families. Christians can be spared suffering, but little Hindu children go blind. One couldn’t blame a Hindu or Muslim or agnostic for resenting, even hating, such a God.”

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Tepid Jesus And Peace In This World.....?

"Tepid preaching and lifeless worship have spread so many ashes on the fire of the gospel that we scarcely feel the glow anymore. We have gotten so used to the ultimate Christian fact—Jesus naked, stripped, crucified, and risen—that we no longer see it for what it is: a summons to strip ourselves of earthly cares and worldly wisdom, of all desire for human praise, of greediness for any kind of comfort (spiritual consolations included). It is a summons to readiness to stand up and be counted as peacemakers in a violent world."

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Time To Take Risks For Peace.

Consider this priest wrote this 28 years ago..... Time for major risks for peace, no matter the cost?   His language of risk taking resonates with todays language.

"What we desperately need to reunderstand is that it is dangerous to be a true Christian. Anyone who takes his or her Christianity seriously will realize that crucifixion is not something that happened to one man nineteen hundred and fifty-odd years ago, nor was martyrdom just the fate of his early followers. It should be an omnipresent risk for every Christian. Christians should—need—in certain ways to live dangerously if they are to live out their faith. The times have made this apparent. Today the times demand of us that we take major risks for peace. And in combating the entrenched forces of the arms race—the principalities and powers of this world—that very much includes the risk of martyrdom.… It is time for communal, congregational action and corporate risk." (Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Pawnshop Of Beliefs And Indistinguishable Mediocrity

"There is no genuine Christianity where the sign of the Cross is absent. Cheap grace is grace without the Cross, an intellectual assent to a dusty pawnshop of doctrinal beliefs while drifting aimlessly with the cultural values of the secular city. Discipleship without sacrifice breeds a comfortable Christianity barely distinguishable in its mediocrity from the rest of the world. The Cross is both the test and the destiny of a follower of Christ."

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Ending Where It Began - But Better

"Anthropologist Mary Douglas, in her posthumous masterpiece, Thinking in Circles, discovered that ancient writings such as the Hebrew Scriptures were written not in linear sequences, but in circuitry. You start at the beginning, and end back at the beginning, but not the beginning where you began. You end at a new beginning, where you have grown and matured, discovered something new, and found something newly valued."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

A Competitive Posse.....

"It’s easy to get lost when we’re working our way through life. A work ethic urges us to “go it alone,” to fight our way through, to set out toward mirages of self-made glory  — superficial paths of sheen and shimmer  — in order to get where we want to go. A work ethic causes us to be competitive and to try to lead our own posse." (The Well Played Life. Leonard Sweet)

In The Hands Of The Devil, Or God?

Most preaching make it sound like we are more in the hands of the devil than in God’s hands.....

"Evangelist Robert Frost, in an address in San Jose, California, remarked, “The Lord brought me up short with the challenge: ‘Why do you persist in seeing your children in the hands of the devil, rather than in the arms of their faithful Shepherd?’ I then realized that in my mind I had been imagining the evils of the present age as being more powerful than the timeless love of God.”
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Free For Holiness

"Human nature, freed from the slavery of sin, is capable of awesome holiness." (Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

The One Who Loves The Most

"According to the evangelical criterion for holiness, the person closest to the heart of Jesus Christ is not the one who prays the most, studies Scripture the most, or the one who has the most important position of spiritual responsibility entrusted to his or her care. It is the one who loves the most, and that is not my opinion."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

The Search for Love and Wealth are Always the Two Best Stories

"The search for love and the search for wealth are always the two best stories. But while a love story is timeless, the story of a quest for wealth, given enough time, will always seem like the vain pursuit of a mirage."

(Salt: A World History. Mark Kurlansky)

Salt Created The First Engineers Inventions and Highways

"Salt became one of the first international commodities of trade;  its production was one of the first industries and, inevitably, the first state monopoly.

The search for salt has challenged engineers for millennia and created some of the most bizarre, along with some of the most ingenious, machines. A number of the greatest public works ever conceived were motivated by the need to move salt. Salt has been in the forefront of the development of both chemistry and geology. Trade routes that have remained major thoroughfares were established, alliances built, empires secured, and revolutions provoked— all for something that fills the ocean, bubbles up from springs, forms crusts in lake beds, and thickly veins a large part of the earth’s rock fairly close to the surface."
(Salt: A World History.  Mark Kurlansky)

Fragile Strength

"As we step out into the unknown, we discover that we can be fragile and strong, and terrified and brave all at the same time."

(Paul S. Boynton - Begin with Yes)

Drifting Truth.....

"The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate  those that speak it.”
(George Orwell)

The Storm Of Thoughs..... IS Life.....

"Life does not consist mainly—or even largely—of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head."
(Mark Twain, Autobiography)

The Jesus Heresy

"When you stretch beyond the boundaries and limits of religious orthodoxy, you will come into conflict with authority. You run the risk of being labeled a "heretic." Wear the label proudly. Jesus was the number one heretic."
(Jim Palmer)

Shedding Religious Fear To See Further.

"As you understand more about God, you lose the fear which motivates so much of religion. Shedding this fear, we dare to search beyond the limits which others have set for us. Something to celebrate! ....

When we become more open spiritually, we begin to understand things which we were not ready to see previously.
(Jim Palmer)

I Never Used My Eyes Before..... ?

"Morpheus: I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it.

Neo: Why do my eyes hurt?

Morpheus: You've never used them before.
(The Matrix)

Searching For Beauty And Grace

"So let us look for beauty and grace, for love and friendship, for that which is creative and birth-giving and soul-stretching. Let us dare to laugh at ourselves, healthy affirmative laughter. Only when we take ourselves lightly can we take ourselves really seriously, so that we are given the courage to say, "Yes! I dare disturb the universe".

(From a speech by Madeleine L'engle titled, "Dare To Be Creative". 1984)

Proud Heretics

"When you stretch beyond the boundaries and limits of religious orthodoxy, you will come into conflict with authority. You run the risk of being labeled a "heretic." Wear the label proudly. Jesus was the number one heretic." (Jim Palmer)

If Jesus Never Wept.............?

“A Jesus who never wept could never wipe away my tears.” (Charles Spurgeon)

Where Is Church?

“All places are places of worship to a Christian. Wherever he is, he ought to be in a worshiping frame of mind.” (Charles Spurgeon)

Secret Human Tribalism

"I’ve studied enough psychology to know people don’t actually have that many purely objective opinions. Mostly, we think in tribal patterns. That is, “our people” subscribe to an idea and we adhere to that idea in order to feel a sense of belonging."

( Donald Miller. Storyline Blog)

Salty Gold......

"Salt is so common, so easy to obtain, and so inexpensive that we have forgotten that from the beginning of civilization until about 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history."
(Salt: A World History.  Mark Kurlansky)

Jesus was Definitely Subversive

"But the real Jesus of history was a lightning rod. He got angry. He was the greatest debunker of religious hierarchies and traditions, and the greatest desacralizer of holy places, times, people, rituals, priests and things, that this world has ever seen. The religious establishment hurriedly condemned him to death for blasphemy, while the secular powers executed him for sedition. “Nice” is overrated. “Nice” is being “amiably pleasant, pleasing, and agreeable.” Not exactly the word I would use for Jesus when he was turning over tables in the temple. Jesus did not do this nicely. Jesus was a person of deep love and compassion, but the word “nice” doesn’t fit him. “Defiant” and “subversive” fit much better."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)

Labeling People Makes Life Easy

"Labeling people was actually very comforting. It supplied what every adolescent adult like me needed: scapegoats to blame, adversaries to defeat, and dimwits to set straight, making me innocent, victorious, and right." (Jim Palmer. Divine Nobodies : Shedding Religion To Find God - And the unlikely people who help you.)

Astoundingly Underspoken

" The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated........ Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Mislead Genius....?

"The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it misled him."    (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Spiritual Primitive........

"I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both." (Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Jesus Is Too Simple.........?

"What Jesus teaches is too simple and too wonderful for those who want magic in their religion." (Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Unarmed Pilgrims. ....

"We are already on sacred ground when we reach out to understand rather than condemn, when we forgive rather than seek revenge, when as unarmed pilgrims we are ready to meet our enemies What Jesus teaches is too simple and too wonderful for those who want magic in their religion." (Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Can We Play As A Faith Person?

"The mark of the early church was not, “See how well they work!” but, “See how well they love!” The prevalence of love signals the presence of play. When faith becomes all about beliefs and works instead of relationships, then what we’re really in love with is our own thoughts and opinions and doings  — not an image of God, but an image of ourselves. A play ethic does not suppress or deny the hardness of life, nor is it a flight into the arms of cheap grace." (Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life.)

Enlarge Or Diminish The Lives Of Others?????

"Paschal spirituality says that the truest test of discipleship is the way we live with each other in the community of faith. It is as simple and as demanding as that. In our words and deeds we give shape and form to our faith every day. We make people a little better or leave them a little worse. We either affirm or deprive, enlarge or diminish the lives of others." (Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Entirely Respectable.... But Dull

"He doesn't approve of being late. Not that I ever was. In those days I was always on time. I was entirely respectable, and nothing  unexpected ever happened." (Bilbo Baggins. The Hobbit)

No Matter What They Say.

"If you know your mission in life, then what other people have and do and say about you does not matter. But if you have no mission, or don’t know your mission, then what other people have and do and say about you matters a great deal." (Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

On Being You....

Be yourself,‘ everyone else is already taken. OSCAR WILDE

That Everyone Would Have A Friend

"No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts
And everyone would have a friend And right would always win
And love would never end
This is my grown up Christmas list" - David Foster

Revive Whatever Peace And Love Has Died In Me.

Dear God
ENLIGHTEN WHAT’S DARK IN ME.“

STENGTHEN WHAT'S WEAK IN ME...

MEND WHAT’S BRDKEN IN ME. ,

BIND WHAT’S BRUISED IN ME.

HEAL WHAT'S SICK IN ME, AND LASTLY...

REVIVE WHATEVER PEACE AND LOVE HAS DIED IN ME.- 

Deliberately Unheard

"There is really no such thing as the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard." - Arundhati Roy

Embracing Loneliness

"I would always be frustrated with all those relationships even when I was engaged. I had a ten year thing with this girl and I would often wonder why, even in those most intimate moments of our relationship, I would still feel really lonely. And it was just a few years ago that I finally realized that friendship is not a remedy for loneliness. Loneliness is a part of our experience and if we are looking for relief from loneliness in friendship, we are only going to frustrate the friendship. Friendship, camaraderie, intimacy, all those things, and loneliness live together in the same experience..." -- Rich Mullins

I See You.....

''I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen."

(John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent)

My House Is A Mast.... Not An Anchor

"But you, children of space. You restless in rest. You shall not be tamed nor trapped. Your house shall not be an anchor but a mast." (Khalil Gibran)

I'm Trying, So Trying To Get There....

"Down the avenue of trees I can see a spot of sunlight. I'm trying so hard to get there." (Grey Owl)

Why is Sunday So Important?

"Let me just ask straight up: why is the Sunday morning service so important anyway? We Protestants have the same religious zeal for it that the Roman Catholic Church has for the sacraments or the Pharisees had for the Sabbath and temple offerings. But we have much less Scripture to back up our making the Sunday morning service a priority than either the Catholics or the first-century Jewish leaders had for their practices. Yikes, is that true?!? Certainly the Jewish leaders at the time of Christ could easily point to OT passages commanding that we keep the Sabbath and observe the rites of temple worship. The Roman Catholics can easily point to texts commanding us to take the bread and cup and baptize. Granted, we may argue about what that means to us, but they at least have Scriptural commands to back their practices up.

We evangelicals give so much talk to holding firm to our Bibles in faith and practice, but in reality, much of what we consider most important is not found at all in the Bibles we preach from each Sunday. We emphasize sound hermeneutics and doctrine, but then we presume that our Sunday functions of preaching the Word from a pulpit to an audience is not only Biblical, it is central to what church is all about. While this isn't a bad thing to do each week, it is not commanded in the Scriptures and is not what church is all about in the NT."
(Neil Cole)

Broken Noses.....

"Many a time a man’s mouth broke his nose." (Irish Proverb)

Silent Speech

"Once in a while we sat together on the pond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not many words passed between us, for he had grown deaf in his later years, but he occasionally hummed a psalm, which harmonized well enough with my philo- sophy. Our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far more pleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by speech."
(Henry David Thoreau. Walden)

Are Anguished Cries Heard Over Sel Holiness

"For the Christian, one dislocating, self—impoverishing hour spent with a child living in a broken—down dump is worth more than all the burial mounds of rhetoric, all the enfeebled good intentions, all the mumbling and fumbling and tardiness of those Christians who are so busy cultivating their own holiness that they cannot hear the anguished cry of the child in the slum."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Do You Love Me? There Is No Other Question To Ask - Or Answer.

oh my word...... worth a read. .....    some Sunday meditation that slapped me silly.......    "As we noted earlier, a Christian’s right thinking is the new standard for determining what he or she is or is not worth in the sight of God and everyone else.

Above the din the Father cries out, “You go to church every Sunday and read your Bible, but the body of my Son is broken! You memorize chapter and verse and honor all your traditions, but the body of my Son is broken! You recite the creed and defend orthodoxy, but the body of my Son is broken! You hark back to tradition and press forward toward renewal, but the body of my Son is broken!” At this point in church history I believe it is imperative to remember that the Christ of John’s Gospel asked Peter (who had denied him three times) only one question: “Do you love me?” The criterion by which Christ measures his friends and repudiators is still “Do you love me?” What is the good of Bible study, reform, and renewal if we forget this, even if we hold to everything else? How can anyone muster the incredible hardheartedness and the intemperate messianic zeal to inflate style and tradition, orthodoxy, biblical interpretation, and right thinking into such monsters that Jesus’ question to Peter and us is put on the shelf?....

To our contemporary church, which treats chief administrative officiais and charismatic superstars with excessive deference, the Gospel of John sends this prophetic word: The love of Jesus Christ alone gives status in the Christian community."

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

" (Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)