Your Bones are the Same.

There was a king of Spain who was very proud of his ancestors, and who was known for his cruelty to the weak. One time, he was walking with his advisers across a field in Aragon, where - years before - he had lost his father during a battle, when he found a holy man searching a large pile of bones. - What are you doing there? - asked the king. - Honored greetings, Your Majesty - said the holy man. - When I heard that the king of Spain was coming this way, I resolved to recover the bones of your late father and present them to you. But however hard I search, I cannot find them: they are exactly the same as the bones of country folk, the poor, beggars and slaves."

(Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light - Vol 1 )

You Followed A Calf.

"In issue nr. 106 of Jornalinho, (Portugal), I find a story which teaches us much about that which we choose without thinking: One day, a calf needed to cross a virgin forest in order to return to its pasture. Being an irrational animal, it forged out a tortuous path full of bends, up and down hills. The next day, a dog came by and used the same path to cross the forest. Next it was a sheep’s turn, the head of a flock which, upon finding the opening, led its companions through it. Later, men began using the path: they entered and left, turned to the right, to the left, bent down, deviating obstacles, complaining and cursing - and quite rightly so. But they did nothing to create a different alternative. After so much use, in the end, the path became a trail along which poor animals toiled under heavy loads, being forced to go three hours to cover a distance which would normally take thirty minutes, had no one chosen to follow the route opened up by the calf. Many years passed and the trail became the main road of a village, and later the main avenue of a town. Everyone complained about the traffic, because the route it took was the worst possible one. Meanwhile, the old and wise forest laughed, at seeing how men tend to blindly follow the way already open, without ever asking whether it really is the best choice."

Why So Much Work For Nothing?

"The feasts in Valência, Spain, have a curious ritual whose origins lie in the ancient community of carpenters

During the entire year, craftsmen and artists construct giant sculptures in wood. On the week of the feast, they take these sculptures to the main square. People pass, comment, marvel and are moved by such creativity. Then, on St. Joseph’s day all these works of art - except one - are burned on a giant bonfire, watched by thousands of onlookers.
- Why so much work for nothing?
- asked an Englishwoman beside me, as flames licked the sky. - You too will come to an end one day - replied a Spanish woman.
- Can you imagine if, at that moment, an angel asked God: “why so much work for nothing?”

(Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light - Vol 1 )

God's Soul Delight

".... the soul of the righteous person is nothing but a paradise, in which, as God tells us, he takes his delight.....  I can find nothing with which to compare the great beauty of a soul and its great capacity." 
(Teresa of Avila; Interior Castle)

A Temple Set Apart

"Fling wide the portals of your heart;
Make it a temple, set apart
From earthly use for heaven's employ,
Adorned with prayer and love and joy."
George Weissel Hymn

Hike Your Own Hike.

When I set out to walk 300km i was introduced to the concept of "Hike your own hike." I think it applies to life also. This story captivated me.

About the rhythm and the Road -

"There was something missing in your lecture about the Road to Santiago - a pilgrim told me as soon as we left the House of Galicia in Madrid, where I had just attended conference. There was much missing, since my intention had merely been to share some of my experiences. Nevertheless, I invited her for a coffee, curious to learn what she considered an important omission. And Begoña - that was her name - told me: - I have noticed that the majority of pilgrims, whether on the Road to Santiago, or on the paths of life, always try to follow the rhythms of others. “At the beginning of my pilgrimage, I tried to stay with my group. It was tiring and demanded of my body more than I could give, I was always tense, and in the end had trouble with a tendon in my left foot. Unable to walk for two days, I understood that I would only reach Santiago if I obeyed my own personal rhythm. “I took longer than the others, and had to walk alone for long stretches, but it was only by respecting my own rhythm that I managed to complete the journey. Since then I have applied this to everything I must do in life: to respect my own tempo.”

( Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light vol 1)

Questions That Grow

"A certain Rabbi was adored by the community; everyone was enchanted by what he said.

Except for Isaac, who never missed an opportunity to contradict the Rabbi’s interpretations and point out faults in his teachings. The others were annoyed by Isaac, but could do nothing about it.

One day, Isaac died. During the funeral, the community noticed that the Rabbi was deeply upset. - Why are you so sad? - someone commented.
- He was always criticizing everything you said!
- I am not upset for my friend who is now in heaven - replied the Rabbi - I am upset for my own self. While everyone revered me, he challenged me, and I was obliged to improve. Now he has gone, I am afraid I shall stop growing."

(Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light vol 1)

Fighting For Lies

Looking back, most things were not worth it, but others really were.

"More than once, he wasted his time fighting for a lie."

(Paulo Coelho: Warrior Of The Light)

Enthusiastic Conquests

"Know that one must not renounce the enthusiasm of the conquests; they are part of life, ..."

( Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light vol 1)

Charity Instead Of Love & Care?

We are all responsible

"A group of men came along the street; heavily armed soldiers leading a condemned man to the gallows. “That man is no good”, said a disciple to Nasrudin. “I once gave him a silver coin in order to help him start his life afresh, and he did nothing important.” “He may be no good, but perhaps he is now on his way to the gallows because of you,” argued the master. “Perhaps he used the alms in order to buy a dagger, which he then used in committing his crime - because instead of helping him with love and care, you chose to give him alms in order to release yourself from your obligation."

( Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light vol 1)

Intelligent Fools

Mullah Nasrudin (the central figure in almost all tales of the Sufi tradition) had already become a sort of attraction at the main market in the town. Whenever he went there to beg, people would show him a large coin and a small one: Nasrudin always chose the small one.

A generous man who was tired of seeing everyone laugh at Nasrudin, explained to him:

“When people offer you two coins, choose the larger one. Then you will have more money, and people will not think you a fool.”

“You are surely right”, replied Nasrudin. “But if I always chose the larger coin, people would stop offering me money, in order to prove that I am a greater fool than they are. And then I would no longer receive enough for my food. There is nothing wrong with appearing to be a fool, if what you are doing is in fact intelligent.”

(Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light)

Provoked For Free

"A young man went to an abbot from the Sceta monastery, wanting to follow a spiritual path.

- For one whole year, give a coin to anyone who provokes you. - said the abbot.

For twelve months the young man gave a coin away whenever someone provoked him. At the end of a year, he returned to the abbot, to find out his next task.

- Go into town and fetch me food. As soon as the young man left, the abbot disguised himself as a beggar and - taking a shortcut he knew - went to the gates of the town. When the young man approached, he began to insult him.

- How marvelous! - said the young man to the so-called beggar. - For a whole year I had to pay everyone who provoked me, and now I can be provoked for free, without having to spend a thing!

Upon hearing this, the abbot removed his disguise.

- Whoever is capable of not minding what others say, is a man on the path to wisdom. You no longer take insults seriously, therefore you are ready for the next step."

(Paulo Coelho: Warrior Of The Light)

Old Experiences.......

"Saint Antão was living in the desert, when a young man came to him: - Father, I sold all my belongings and gave to the poor. I kept only a few things in order to survive here. I want you to teach me the way to salvation. Saint Antão asked the young man to sell the few things he had kept and, with the money, to buy meat in town. He was to return with the meat tied to his body. The young man obeyed. On his way back, he was attacked by dogs and falcons, who wanted a piece of the meat. - I am back - said the young man, showing his scratched, bitten body, and his clothes in rags. Why did you tell me to do that? - To show that what you brought from your past, is of no use in your present. When you must choose a new path, do not bring old experiences with you. Those who strike out afresh, but who attempt to retain a little of the old life, end up torn apart by their own memories."

(Paulo Coelho: Warrior Of The Light)

So Complicated I Quit.

“Such are the lives of those who haven’t the courage to risk: solutions are generously provided by God, but people always seek complicated explanations, and end up doing nothing.”
( Paulo Coelho: Warrior Of The Light)

Pay up Quickly

"Paying for the same thing three times There is a legend in the region of Punjab, about a thief who broke into a farm and stole two hundred onions. But before he could make his escape, he was caught by the farmer and led before the judge.

The magistrate past sentence: the payment of ten gold pieces. But the man alleged that the fine was too high, so the judge offered him two alternatives: to be whipped twenty times, or eat the two hundred onions.

The thief chose to eat the two hundred onions. When he had eaten twenty-five, his eyes were already filled with tears, and his stomach was burning up like the fires of hell. Since there were still 175 to go, and he knew he would never bear this punishment, he begged to be thrashed twenty times.

The judge agreed. But when the whip tore into his back for the tenth time, he implored for the punishment to be stopped, for he could not stand the pain. His wish was granted, but the thief still had to pay the ten pieces of gold.

- If you had accepted the fine, you would have avoided eating the onions and wouldn’t have suffered with whip - said the judge. - But you preferred the more difficult path, not understanding that, when you have done wrong, it is better to pay up quickly and forget the matter."

(Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light )

My Soul Healed As I Walked

"And the wounds go beyond the physical body; many wounds which had opened up on my soul were expelled by the pain I felt as I walked along the road to Kumano towards a temple whose name escapes me. Certain suffering can only be forgotten when we manage to float above our pain."
(Paulo Coelho: Warrior Of The Light)

The gift of The Unexpected

The gift of the unexpected.....

"... one can often ruin a good pilgrimage by reading all the leaflets, books, guidelines on the Internet, friends’ comments, and arrive at the place knowing everything one ought to be discovering for oneself, not allowing room for the most important element of any journey - the unexpected."

(Paulo Coelho: Warrior Of The Light)

A Pain Not Everyone Senses

".... she says a few words in Japanese, and when I look up, I see on her face the smile of a young woman who chose to be a guide on a road no one knows, who learned to dominate a pain which not everyone senses, and who understands that the path is taken by walking, and not by thinking about it."

(Paulo Coelho: Warrior of the Light)

Not Worth The Wait

"I think a lot of us, especially us older guys, realize that there’s not anything worth standing in line for, especially when we’re talking about a drink,”

Dave Mitton

God The Poor Man Of Prayer

"Well, every evening, when the darkness wraps itself around my prayer, he, God, is there, disguised as a poor man watching me."

(Rueben Job, & Norman Shawchuch. A Guide To Prayer)

Help Me See God By Your Love

"God may make himself known to you through the life of someone who, for you, is an ambassador for God, and whom you can see the beauty and truth and the love of God. It may be that there is someone who loves you so deeply that you dare to believe that you are worth loving and so you can believe that God's love for you could be possible after all."

( Rueben Job, & Norman Shawchuch. A Guide To Prayer)

Too Small For God?

"Nothing in your life is so insignificant, so small, that God cannot be found at its centre. We think of God in the dramatic things, the glorious sunsets, the majestic mountains, the tempestuous seas; but he is in the little things too, in the smile of a passerby or the gnarled hand of an old man, in a daisy, a tiny insect, falling leaves.
God is in the music, in laughter and in sorrow too. And the grey times, when monotony stretches out ahead, these can be the times of steady, solid growth into God."
( Rueben Job, & Norman Shawchuch. A Guide To Prayer)

Living In The Fire Of The Trinity

"To have found God, to have experienced him in the intimacy of our being, to have lived even for one hour in the fire of his Trinity and the bliss of his Unity clearly makes us say: "Now I understand. You alone are enough for me.""

(From the God who Comes by Carlo Carretto. Sited in Rueben Job, & Norman Shawchuch. A Guide To Prayer)

How He Comes Why He Comes

"And his coming and his presence are not only the result for our waiting or a prize for our efforts: they are his decision, based on his love freely poured out.
His coming is bound to his promise, not to our works or virtue. We have not earned the meeting with God because we have served in faithfully in our brethren, or because we have heaped up such a pile of virtue as to shine before heaven.

God is thrust forward by his love not attracted by your beauty. He comes even in moments when we have done everything wrong, when we have done nothing. When we have sinned."

(From the God who comes by Carlo.. as sited in Rueben Job, & Norman Shawchuch. A Guide To Prayer)

Forced To Starve

"And we pray for those who are hungry every day, for those who never know the privilege of a fast because they are forced to starve."

(Rueben Job, & Norman Shawchuch. A Guide To Prayer )

Listen To Stories

"As we listen to another person's story, we come to see more clearly the movement of God in our own lives. This has always been so. Whenever the Israelites became discouraged or frightened or forgetful, their leaders would get them together together to tell them 'the story' one more time.  They would always find God hidden in the story. And in finding God within another's experience they were able to interpret the movement of God within their own."

(Rueben Job, & Norman Shawchuch. A Guide To Prayer)

Preaching The Gospel Of Hell?

"THE QUESTION IS COMPELLING. “Do you know where you would end up if you died in a car accident tonight?” The evangelist has already painted the pictures. You could find yourself in an eternal garden of exquisite beauty laced together with winding paths of gold— or writhing in agony amid the leaping sulfuric flames of hell.

If there was ever a choice that defined “no-brainer,” this is it. Once you convince someone that hell and heaven exist, winning a convert is easy. After all, praying for forgiveness and “accepting Jesus” seem like a small price to pay for a get-out-of-hell-free card!

So effective is this appeal to people’s worst fears and insecurities that hell has become the most popular invitation into God’s kingdom. What we have not so critically examined is whether or not threatening people with hell engages them in the relationship God has always wanted with them.

We live in a day when millions of people have made a commitment to Christ and yet few lives are really transformed by his power. It has been said of this generation that our Christianity is a mile wide but only an inch deep. We see effects of it everywhere. People claim to know God but show no evidence of transformation in their daily lives. We challenge them as hypocrites and attempt to badger them into more-righteous lifestyles, but in the end most believers end up as much a part of the world’s ways as their nonbelieving neighbors.

While the threat of hell can stir instant commitments, it does not breed long-term disciples. If you are in this kingdom only because you fear the alternative, you’ve missed the greatest part of what it means to know God."

(He Loves Me. Wayne Jacobsen )

Cowering From The Nasty God

"We all know what it takes to get acquainted with new people, the awkward pauses and measured words as people get to know one another....

...but at some point they found themselves safe enough with him and one another to let down their guards. No longer measuring words or trying to impress one another, they slipped into the fruits of their burgeoning friendship— the freedom to be honest, to laugh, to ask the seemingly stupid question, and to relax in one another’s presence.

What must that have felt like to Jesus? Had this been what he had always wanted?

For the first time since that cruel day in Eden, God was sitting down with people he loved and they were not cowering in fear. For centuries men and women had stood at a great distance from God, shamed by their sin and intimidated by his holiness. With only a few notable exceptions, people wanted nothing to do with the immediacy of God’s presence. When Mount Sinai shook with thunder and earthquakes, the people begged Moses to go to God for them. God was a terrifying figure, and feeling safe with him was unthinkable. But God had never thought so."
(He Loves Me. Wayne Jacobsen)

Summary Sin

"...... an old outline I heard a pentecostal preacher give 30 years ago re the story of David and Bathsheba. 
Sin takes you farther than you want to go, costs you more  than you want to pay, keeps you longer than you want to stay."

( Alan Beck)

When Men Destroy In His Name.

"We must believe that God is very far from the war path and he does not like it when men destroy in his name."

(Jean Zerbo. Archbishop of Bamako, Christmas 2015)

Unity Is Better Than Proximity

"Unity is a better gift than proximity."
(Jeff Frazee)

Lots of people  sitting in the same pew, or born into a family they live around.
Observations.
Unity is more than proximity.
Unity can exist without proximity.
Proximity is not the same as unity.
Proximity is no assurance or guarantee there is unity.

Excluding

"Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and myself from the community of sinners."

~ Miroslav Volf

God's Windpipe

"God is not mute: the Word spoke, not out of a whirlwind, but out of the human larynx of a Palestinian Jew."

(Philip Yancey, THE JESUS I NEVER KNEW)

Organised Religion Lost me.

"I left the synagogue and went on with my life and I thought that maybe it would be a long time before I ever looked organized religion in the face again. I should have known that my faith was not strong enough to endure examination, that it was too primitive and not sophisticated enough, and I was sad and sorry that I had asked it to withstand what it wasn’t capable of."

What Would Cool Jesus Do?
BY TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER

http://www.gq.com/story/inside-hillsong-church-of-justin-bieber-kevin-durant

Your Church Threats Are Not Needed.

"What the Father showed us in the gift of his Son is that he was unwilling to settle for the indentured servitude of fearful slaves. He preferred instead the intimate affection of sons and daughters. He knew love would take us deeper into his life than fearful obligation ever would. It would teach us more truth, free us from our selfishness and failures, and make us fruitful in the world." (He Loves Me. Wayne Jacobsen)

The Devils Religious Habit

"I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man’s mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God."

(Donald Miller Blue like Jazz)

Walk To See

“When you walk, walk...."
“But doesn’t everyone do that?”
“No,” the master said.
“Many people when they walk are interested only in getting to the place where they are going. They are not really experiencing the walking."

(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Hearing The Music Of Today.

"Being fully present in the now is perhaps the premier skill of the spiritual life. More often than not, I do not hear the music of what is happening now because my mind ricochets between the past and the future."

(Brennan Manning. Ruthless Trust )

Where Jesus Begins And Ends?

"The Third Age can be when Jesus becomes so close to us, and his life so enters our lives, that it becomes hard to tell where his life begins and our lives end."
(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life )

When The Spirit Ignites Whats There

"MANY, MANY YEARS AGO, a Colorado pioneer built a rock cabin. After the house was completed, he started a fire in the hearth. In a matter of seconds, the entire cabin became a burning holocaust. It seems the rocks were shale and were impregnated with oil. The oil had survived for centuries within the rock. But when the oil was touched by fire, it exploded instantly, releasing its untapped energy. This is what happened at Pentecost in the book of Acts and what happens whenever we keep Pentecost. When God fires up our lives, God’s Spirit fills us with the fiery power of heaven. The Holy Spirit does not give us anything special. The Spirit merely ignites dominant spiritual energies which have lain dormant all along."

( Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life )

Scratch A Senior Find A Child - Age

"I used to be afraid of people who were aged. But in my relationships with seniors, and my own growing seniority, I find that if you scratch a senior even a little bit, you find somebody’s little girl or little boy. Inside every older person is a young person of a secret age—wondering what in the world happened. I tell my young seminary students to approach older parishioners with this in mind: Every one of them thinks they’re your age. In their minds, they’re exactly whatever age you are. I don’t care if they’re ninety years old; in their minds, they’re whatever age you are."
(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life )

Transformed By What I Didn't Say.

"Often we preachers are crestfallen when “our most ‘telling’ remarks fall flat,” as Simon Tugwell notes, “and our most unrehearsed and immature thoughts bear fruit. People’s lives are changed by casual sayings they misunderstand or mishear.”

(Brennan Manning. Ruthless Trust )

Jesus Only Wants The Pretty Me.....

"Sometimes we harbor an unexpressed suspicion that he cannot handle all that goes on in our minds and hearts. We doubt that he can accept our hateful thoughts, cruel fantasies, and bizarre dreams. We wonder how he would deal with our primitive urges, our inflated illusions, and our exotic mental castles. The deep resistance to making ourselves so vulnerable, so naked, so totally unprotected is our implicit way of saying, “Jesus, I trust you, but there are limits.”

By refusing to share our fantasies, worries, and joys, we limit God’s lordship over our life and make clear that there are parts of us that we do not wish to submit to a divine conversation.

It seems that the Master had something more in mind when he said, “Trust in me”(John 14:1b).
(Brennan Manning. Ruthless Trust)

Speak And They Kill You. SILENT and they still Kill You

"Tahar Djaout, one of the first Algerian intellectuals cut down by assassination in 1993, had expressed the reporter’s predicament perfectly :

“If you speak out, they will kill you. If you keep silent, they will kill you . So speak out, and die.”

And he did. The nineties violence made Algeria, according to a 2012 UN report, one of the five deadliest locations for reporters in the last twenty years.  A total of a hundred press workers, including sixty journalists, were killed by the fundamentalist armed groups between 1993 and 1997....

I am always slightly in awe of Algerian journalists— the risks they ran, the truths they tried to tell. They transmitted the news of assassinated women, 17 of popular protest against terrorism, 18 and of government malfeasance."

(Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here : Untold Stories From The Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism)

Walk On Your Own Grass

“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.”

― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

How You Write A Nations Autobiography

"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts  —the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last."

(John Ruskin The Works of John Ruskin)

Growing Up

"The sadness of life is not of growing old, but of growing up."
~Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life

Huge Church Blame Game...

Always looking To blame: 

Why are people.......
leaving,
coming,
going, 
staying,
doing,
not doing....

The most helpful comment in months is the following that I just read.

"Perhaps there is no "blame" at all. Might it be that the Body of Christ is emerging just as He has designed?"

My wife's wise insight, and single comment about the blame game?

"People aren't doing what we want, so there must be something wrong,"
(Lynn Rayner)

I'm sticking both to my wall.....

Without Stories

"Without stories, the land turns into real estate."

Mark Agley

Disqualify Truth

"We routinely disqualify testimony that would plead for extenuation. That is, we are so persuaded of the rightness of our judgment as to invalidate evidence that does not confirm us in it. Nothing that deserves to be called truth could ever be arrived at by such means."

—Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam

Cloistered Spirituality

"He realized he was stuck, and Sunday prayers and hymns weren’t cutting it anymore, if they ever really had. Cloistered spirituality seemed to change nothing in the lives of the people he knew, except maybe Nan. But she was special. God might really love her. She wasn’t a screw-up like him. He was sick of God and God’s religion, sick of all the little religious social clubs that didn’t seem to make any real difference or affect any real changes. Yes, Mack wanted more, and he was about to get much more than he bargained for."

(Paul Young. The Shack )

Deciphered By the Proper Religious Authorities.

".... the thought of God passing notes did not fit well with his theological training. In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects."

(Paul Young. The Shack)

Muslims Took Me In

"You need to know that this is deeply personal. I live among Muslims who have taken me in, fed me, given up their bed for me, cared for me when I wrecked my motorcycle, and have patiently listened to me massacre their language until I could communicate and be a friend."

(K. Hoch. Friend Working in a West African Country)

When Its Too Easy

"It's hard to be a Christian where it is easy to be a Christian & it is easy to be Christian where it's hard to be one"

Richard John Neuhaus

What Is Necessary?

"Because I always believed that the spiritual doesn’t necessarily involve sacrifice and pain. But, as someone I met on this journey said, one must learn what is necessary, not what one wishes."

( Paulo Coelho )

Guide Book Pilgrimage

:..... one can often ruin a good pilgrimage by reading all the leaflets, books, guidelines on the Internet, friends’ comments, and arrive at the place knowing everything one ought to be discovering for oneself, not allowing room for the most important element of any journey - the unexpected."

(Paulo Coelho: Warrior Of The Light Volume 1)

Serving The Big Something Awful?

"Reading and writing I enjoyed, but religion not so much. When I was a boy, God was a stained-glass ceiling, a deity way up and out there, remote, big, and harsh. There is a descriptive phrase I’ve used for my early view of God, taken from Flannery O’Connor’s “Turkey” story: God was the “Something Awful.”

( Brennan Manning. All Is Grace)

Your Shame On Me

"She grew angry. “Stop that! Stop saying that. You stop that now!”
My mother then stormed toward me and began punching me, over and over, to the point where I fell on the floor. She straddled me and continued to punch me, screaming, “Shut up! Shut up!”
My grandmother then entered the room, and her calm voice halted things. “Amy, you better stop. You’re going to hurt him.”This is what I meant about disarming: She didn’t come in shouting at my mother, as one would imagine she would do. She was calm and somehow knew that her gentle approach would make my mother stop. Whether it was immediate or gradual, I don’t remember. All I know is that the punching stopped. There had been occasions before that moment when I questioned my value as a person, but that experience, when I was eight years old, confirmed my unworthiness. I felt like I would disappear into a pile of ashes.
Shame—what happened when my mother, the dragon, huffed and puffed and blew my self down....

... so was the childhood of my parents and probably their parents. As my friend Richard Rohr said, “If we don’t learn to transform the pain, we’ll transfer it.” I realized my mother wasn’t the dragon; she was another victim of the dragon. But the dragon doesn’t die easily, so the shame just kept passing down the generations. I fear I’ve passed it along as well.

(Brennan Manning. All Is Grace)

Transfer Your Pain

“If we don’t learn to transform the pain, we’ll transfer it.”

(Richard Rohr)

Forgiveness

"Where did Christians ever get the idea that we could hold forgiveness ransom to an apology?"

- Karl Ingersoll

The Great Sadness

The Great Sadness had draped itself around Mack’s shoulders like some invisible but almost tangibly heavy quilt. The weight of its presence dulled his eyes and stooped his shoulders. Even his efforts to shake it off were exhausting, as if his arms were sewn into its bleak folds of despair and he had somehow become part of it. He ate, worked, loved, dreamed and played in this garment of heaviness, weighed down as if he were wearing a leaden bathrobe—trudging daily through the murky despondency that sucked the color out of everything."

~ William P. Young. The Shack

Lonely Secrets

"Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets."

—Paul Tournier

What God Uses To Teach?

The Warrior of the Light has learned that God uses solitude to teach us how to live with other people.
He uses rage to show us the infinite value of peace.
He uses boredom to underline the importance of adventure and spontaneity.
God uses silence to teach us to use words responsibly.
He uses tiredness so that we can understand the value of waking up.
He uses illness to underline the blessing of good health.
God uses fire to teach us about water.
He uses earth to explain the value of air.
He uses death to show us the importance of life."

(Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light - Short Notes On Accepting Failure, Embracing Life )

Living Your Contradictions

It was dark by the time she finished speaking. The two of them sat watching the moon rising.
“Many of the things you told me contradict each other,” he said.

She got up.

“Goodbye,” she said. “You knew that the bells at the bottom of the sea were not just a legend, but you could only hear them when you realized that the wind, the seagulls, and the sound of the palm fronds were all part of the pealing of the bells.

“In just the same way, the Warrior of the Light knows that everything around him—his victories, his defeats, his enthusiasm,
and his despondency—form part of his Good Fight. And he will know which strategy to use when he needs it. A Warrior does not try to be coherent; he has learned to live with his contradictions.”

( Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light - Short Notes On Accepting Failure, Embracing Life. )

The Command To Move On

"When the order to move on comes, the Warrior looks at all the friends he has made during the time that he followed the path.

He taught some to hear the bells of a drowned temple, he told others stories around the fire.

His heart is sad, but he knows that his sword is sacred and that he must obey the orders of the One to whom he offered up his struggle.

Then the Warrior thanks his traveling companions, takes a deep breath and continues on, laden with memories of an unforgettable journey."

( Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light - Short Notes On Accepting Failure, Embracing Life. )

Commandments That Must Be Disobeyed

First: God is sacrifice. Suffer in this life and you will be happy in the next.

Second: People who have fun are childish. Remain tense at all times.

Third: Other people know what is best for us because they have more experience.

Fourth: Our duty is to make other people happy. We must please them even if that means making major sacrifices.

Fifth: We must not drink from the cup of happiness; we might get to like it and we won’t always have it in our hands.

Sixth: We must accept all punishments. We are guilty.

Seventh: Fear is a warning. We don’t want to take any risks.

These are the commandments that no Warrior of the Light can obey.

(Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light - Short Notes On Accepting Failure, Embracing Life)

Sadly Alive

“You, however, are sad. That proves that your soul is still alive.”

( Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light - Short Notes On Accepting Failure, Embracing Life)

Emotional Rubbish

"There is such a thing as emotional rubbish; it is produced in the factories of the mind. It consists of pain that has long since passed and is no longer useful. It consists of precautions that were important in the past, but that serve no purpose in the present."

~Paulo Coelho : Warrior Of The Light - Short Notes On Accepting Failure, Embracing Life.

A Boat

“The boat will show you that she is alive and loves life, just as humans do.”

(Greek Fisherman Alexandros Kritsalis in Parikia)

If You Believe In God

"He wanted a narrative to help him express to them not only the depth of his love, but also to help them understand what had been going on in his inside world. You know that place: where there is just you alone—and maybe God, if you believe in him. Of course, God might be there even if you don’t believe in him. That would be just like him. He hasn’t been called the Grand Interferer for nothing."

( William P. Young. The Shack )

In A World Of Talkers

"In a world of talkers, Mack is a thinker and doer. He doesn’t say much unless you ask him directly, which most folks have learned not to do. When he does speak you wonder if he isn’t some sort of alien who sees the landscape of human ideas and experiences differently than everybody else.

The thing is, he usually makes uncomfortable sense in a world where most folks would rather just hear what they are used to hearing, which is often not much of anything. Those who know him generally like him well enough, providing he keeps his thoughts mostly to himself. And when he does talk, it isn’t that they stop liking him—rather, they are not quite so satisfied with themselves."

(William P. Young. The Shack)

Treating Pain With Clichés

"I worry about people who know why bad things happen or think they can treat hurt with words and pain with clichés."

(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Your Brutal Tips & Techniques Bible

"We must return to the scriptures for the story that it is and stop approaching it as if it is an encyclopedia, looking for "tips and techniques.""

(John Eldredge)

Oppressed Church

“In the world you can miss it ten times and hit right once and they’re impressed. You can get it right nine times in the church and miss it once and you’re oppressed.” 

~ Larry Randolph

When I Don't Want To Fight Your Battles

"He nevertheless meets people who ask him to fight battles that are not his own, on battlefields that he does not know, or which do not interest him. They want to involve the Warrior of the Light in contests that are important to them, but not to him.

(Paulo Coelho. Warrior Of The Light : Short Notes On Accepting Failure, Embracing Life....)

About where I'm at the last decade. These other things are good too, just not my battle, not my interest, not my priority.
Therefore, when belonging is hinged on conformity and immersion into your plan, it is you who make render it very hard to belong. When we get labeled for how we conform, or not, to your vision or plan,  it is you who make it very hard to belong.  Much manipulation takes place there.

When I try to live it out, all hell breaks loose

"As a writer, I live in daily awareness of how much easier it is to edit a book than edit a life. When I write about what I believe and how I should live, it sounds neat and orderly. When I try to live it out, all hell breaks loose."

(Philip Yance)

There Is Crack in Everything

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in."

Leonard Cohen

The Way Rules To Live By, Through right Relationships To Live For.

The Way to save the world  is not through more rules to live by, but through right relationship to live for. People are fast loosing the art of being with one another."

(Leonard Sweet. What Matters Most: How We Got The Point But Missed The Person) 

Church Ain't What It Used to Be?

"There was obviously flexability about the order of service in the Early Church which is now totally lacking. There was clearly no settled order at all. Everything was informal enough to allow any man who felt that he had a message to give to give it. It may well be that we set far too much store on dignity and order nowadays. It may well be that we have become the slaves of orders of service. The really notable thing about an early Church service must have been that almost everyone came with a sense that he had both the privilege and the obligation of contributing something to it. A man did not come with the sole intention of being a passive listener. He did not come only to receive, he came also to give. Obviously this had its dangers for it is clear that in Corinth there were those who were too fond of the sound of their own voices: but nonetheless the Church must have been in those days much more the real possession of the ordinary Christian. It may well be that the Church lost something when she delegated so much to the professional ministry and left so little to the ordinary Church member; and it may well be that the blame lies not with the ministry for annexing those rights. but with the laity for abandoning them, because it is all too true that there are many Church members whose attitude is that they think far more of what the Church can do for them than of what they can do for the Church. and who are very ready to criticize what is done but very unready to take any share in doing the Church's work themselves."

(William Barclay. Letter To The Corinthians)

Muted By Your Leadership?

"How often do we lose our true way of missioning in the world because "mere followers" have become muted by the remote control of church leadership?"

(Leonard Sweet. I Am A Follower)

Never Been Anywhere

"The poor rarely travel. Like us, you have probably traveled widely, at least within your own country, if not to other nations. Aside from occasional bus trips to cities to visit with relatives , and visits to markets in bigger nearby villages, the poor are likely to live and die in a single place, isolated from most of the world around them. As a result, they’re rarely aware of the new ideas and new opportunities that surface so frequently in today’s fast-changing world."

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

That Look In The Warriors Eye

"You can recognize a Warrior of the Light by the look in his eye. Warriors of the Light are in the world, they form part of the world, and they were sent into the world without saddlebags or sandals. They are often cowardly. They do not always act correctly. Warriors of the Light are wounded by the most foolish things, they worry about trivialities, they believe themselves incapable of growing. Warriors of the Light sometimes believe themselves unworthy of any blessing or miracle. Warriors of the Light often ask themselves what they are doing here. Often they find their lives meaningless. That is why they are Warriors of the Light. Because they fail. Because they ask questions. Because they keep looking for a meaning. And, in the end, they will find it."

(Paulo Coelho. Warrior Of The Light)

Refuting Unnecessary Suffering

"Someone who saw the unnecessary suffering and who will not accept it."
(Paulo Coelho. Warrior Of The Light)

Warriors Never Accept What is Unacceptable

"Hitler may have lost the war on the battlefield, but he ended up winning something too,” says Marek Halter, “because man in the twentieth century created the concentration camp and revived torture and taught his fellow men that it is possible to close their eyes to the misfortunes of others.” Perhaps he is right: There are abandoned children, massacred civilians, innocent people imprisoned, lonely old people, drunks in the gutter, madmen in power. But perhaps he isn’t right at all, for there are also Warriors of the Light. And Warriors of the Light never accept what is unacceptable."
(Paulo Coelho. Warrior Of The Light)

Dialogue With my Neuroses

"Each morning I dialogue with my neuroses and inquire whether they are in a state of acute agitation or in their normal debilitating state. If the former, I ask for the grace to draw upon deeper reserves of empathy; if the latter, I rely on my regular reservoir of compassion. Later in the day, this helps me to be gentle with the nuttiness of my neighbors."

( Brennan Manning. Ruthless Trust )

A Terrorist Spirituality

"I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone. I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery."
( Brennan Manning. Ruthless Trust )

Must I Fake It With You?

"Is there anyone I can level with? Anyone I dare tell that I am benevolent and malevolent, chaste and randy, compassionate and vindictive, selfless and selfish, that beneath my brave words lives a frightened child, that I dabble in religion and pornography, that I have blackened a friend’s character, betrayed a trust, violated a confidence, that I am tolerant and thoughtful, a bigot and a blowhard, that I hate hard rock?"

(Brennan Manning.  Abba's Child)

I Can't Bare My Soul

"Sensing that if I bare my soul, I will be abandoned by my friends and ridiculed by my enemies, I remain in hiding, borrowing from the cosmetic kit to put on my pretty face."

(Brennan Manning. Ruthless Trust)

Tired Of Playing With The Box

"I think that in the twenty first century Christians have become enamored with the box, and have ignored the gift. This is what we've done. We decorate our boxes. We label them with signs. We define them by our beliefs. We install sound systems.  Some even have beautiful stained glass windows. But it is still just a box. It's  just a box.  ......

Why do this thing we call church? Why do we do this? I don't want Charlottetown Vineyard to exist so that we can continue to exist. That is not enough for me. It's not enough.....

I want more than the box. I want the gift. Guys, I desperately want the gift, with everything that is in me.  I want the gift. I'm tired of playing with the box. I've played with the box until there ain't  much left  that I can imagine to do with the box. I want the gift."

(Tom Zawacki 2015, Charlottetown Vineyard)

No Experience.... No Knowledge...

"In Western thinking knowledge is the intellectual apprehension of reality, the mind’s affirmation of a truth perceived. In the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, knowledge is felt; it arises from an experience of God in faith and love rather than from human investigation. Knowledge is the fruit of a faith-encounter with Jesus as the Christ. It is simply not possible to receive the revelation of God in the transcendent/immanent Christ without experience. Experience is an essential part of knowing Jesus and of the whole concept of revelation."
(Ruthless Trust. Brennan Manning)

Attend My Church Heresy

"'Churchy' thinking is one of the great heresies of the modern church - the notion that unless one appears regularly in a certain kind of building labeled a Christian church, God has no relationship with them whatsoever. This is a manifestation of the current 'preacher-cult' in which the clergy emphasize church attendance as the heart of the religious life, and thereby maintain a Sunday morning fan club." Clyde Reid (1966)

"Some people may have to reject the churches to find Christ and vitality, for there are many churches where it is almost impossible to find or to recover that vitality. And God is surely present outside the churches - often more present without than within. God's spirit is free in the world, and not captive in the churches. The Spirit of God has always resisted our efforts to put Him in a box and control access to Him. The Spirit moves where He will, and sometimes it has to bypass the comfortable, respectable structures we call religious, and speak to us in fresh ways and unaccustomed tongues."

- Clyde Reid (1966)

Jesus Or The Accuser?

"There's a very simple way to discern whether a school of thought comes from Jesus or from the accuser.
The first is always seeking to expand the circle of who you think is your neighbor.
The second is always seeking to expand the circle of who you think is your enemy.
Which of these sounds more like ideology of the typical American church?"

(Ben Fullerton)

Who Is Your Neighbour, versus who is my enemy

Ben Fullerton
There's a very simple way to discern whether a school of thought comes from Jesus or from the accuser. The first is always seeking to expand the circle of who you think is your neighbor. The second is always seeking to expand the circle of who you think is your enemy.

Which of these sounds more like ideology of the typical American church?

Making Laws To Protect Grace?

"Evangelicals have benefited enormously from the faithful and creative labors of many theologians. I certainly acknowledge that for myself. But there are other less acknowledged sides to the story of theology:

- its inability to connect with everyday concerns;
- its use to patronize and disdain others;
- its role in propping up an elitist system of leadership;
- its deadening effects on young theological students;
- its promotion of pedantry and destructive debate;
- its second-hand character that minimizes genuine creative and new perspective;
- the ways it imposes law in the name of protecting grace;
- the ways it preempts and gags conversations that might otherwise break new ground in integrating faith and life.

There is great value in laying a foundation of beliefs. But the methods and disposition of theology have failed to deliver its promise of a richer personal knowledge of God. Theology and church have by and large abducted the conversations that rightfully stand at the heart of the gathering."

Mark Strom:Reframing Paul: Conversations in Grace & Community (IVP, 2000), p. 125

Love Moves Me - And Love Moves Me

Let's do a Sunday Confession.

We have separated "Love" from "Affection" in religious systems. Even taught it so. This has been one of MY gravest errors as a theologian, and human being,  in the past.  This is what permitted me to be too heartless, gave me licence to be a lesser kind of person in how I associate with people... particularly  people I do not like, or understand.

I am not really loving anyone well apart from genuine affection, nor am I really loved without affection. Without affection, love becomes mere obligation, performance, rote, an empty duty that is not recognizing the humanity and value of the person in front of us.  We have all felt the emptiness of acts of service done out of obligation, or duty, but not desire. Dehumanizing to give, and receive. Duty happens, but it is very incomplete. Duty hurts.

Love, separated from affection, is a bar set too low, is a selling out of my call to love as God loves.  (I know what we have all been taught about the four loves, and Agape)

God's love is not separated from affection. Agape is not devoid of affection.. rather is brimming with it. Think of it..... God likes you, has a fondness for you.

As Brennan Manning Meditated on...

I AM MY BELOVED’S, AND HIS DESIRE IS FOR ME. (7:10 NASB)

"Over the past thirty years, I have prayed that passage (Song of Solomon 7:10ff.) in soaring 747s, monasteries, caves, retreat centers, and deserted places. I believe His desire for you and me can best be described as a furious longing." (Brennan Manning)

We are loved by God "AFFECTIONATELY".

I agree that Agape calls for love as a verb, love as acts of service. But they are "AFFECTIONATE" acts of service, NOT MERE DUTY. 

Affectionless duty,
Affectionless fatherhood,
Affectionless motherhood,
Affectionless marriage,
Affectionless sex,
Affectionless service,
Affectionless meetings and gatherings.
Affectionless conversation and dialogue,
Affectionless relationships,
Affectionless time spent with,

Is not love.

You can quote me... "Love moves me, and love moves me." (Andy Rayner)

Get it?

My Sunday confession... I was wrong, I've called myself, and others I have taught to an error. I have been trying to move on, and I suggest you should also.

When i cannot find a fondness in me towards you, the problem is not what you have done, or not done, it is a failure within me. I've failed to see your worth, and respond according to you worth.

If a man would learn to pray, let him go to sea

Brennan Manning actually worked on s Shrimp boat... as Franciscan

"One day we were on our way home from Beaumont when we caught the end of a Texas tailstorm. The water was calm at first. And our forty-five-foot-long boat bobbed lazily in the water like the boat on the cover of this book. But suddenly the clouds gathered and the temperature dropped. The sea began to churn, sweeping spray across the bow. Waves pummeled the sides of the boat. Our seasoned captain told us to get below. Below deck, we reached for metal handles and dear life. I was convinced we were going to die. Then the storm, the real storm, hit. Winds of 120 miles per hour. Sudden swells ten feet high. It was a fury unleashed.

Someone once said, If a man would learn to pray, let him go to sea. My life has been a life lived in God’s furious longing. And I have learned to pray."

(Brennan Manning.  The Furious Longing of God)

Suicide Money

"The whole world is committing suicide for monee." (No typo)

Said to Moritz in Brazil by Orlando. ‎Moritz Thomsen‬. The Saddest Pleasure‬

Not Seen...

"Sometimes, driven to make an effort that is against my inclinations, my sense of propriety, I will smile at passing strangers, trying to involve them with a desperate, whorish look to look back and acknowledge my existence. But their faces are preoccupied; they look through me as though were transparent or as though I were some old and superfluous derelict about to put the bite on them for a cup coffee."

(Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure : A Journey On Two Rivers)

Fascination In Strange Places

"In less than a day I have done my duty as a tourist and am now confronted with the problem of time. My curiosity is too easily satisfied or rather I have learned that the fascination of a strange place is centered in its people rather than and its fuse and monuments. Great bronze statues of generals on horses bore the shit out of me...."
( Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure : A Journey On Two Rivers)

Too Many Eyes

"Famous sights seen by too many eyes are robbed little by little of their power to excite or dazzle; each pair of eyes has taken something away. Public things are diminished by lying helpless under the public gaze....."

(Moritz Thomsen The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey On Two Rivers)

Blind, Drunk, or Asleep

"If the trouble isn't with the rider. There's still the threat of the car driver. For some reason most car drivers just don't  seem to see bikes. So ya got to think of them as asleep, blind, or drunk. (Peter Fonda)

Forget A Really Great Career

"Mommy and daddy told me if I work really hard I will have a good career. So if you work hard and have a good career, if you work really, really, really hard, you'll have a great career. Doesn't that, like, mathematically make sense?
Hummm, not!
But you've  managed to talk yourself into that. You know what, here's a little secret. You want to work hard?
You want to work really, really, really hard? You know what, you'll succeed. The world will give you the opportunity to work really, really, really, really hard. But, are you so sure that that's going to give you a great career, when all of the evidence is to the contrary. "

(Larry Smith. TED Talk)

Deeper Into The World.

"The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it" — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Is God In the Corner Of Your Church?

“How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays.  The churches and missionary societies have so bound him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves.”
- C.T. Studd

There is Actually MORE.....After All

"Do more than belong: participate. Do more than care: help. Do more than believe: practice. Do more than be fair: be kind. Do more than forgive: forget. Do more than dream: work."

~ William Arthur Ward

Stop Trying To Change Gay... And Change.....

"Changing someone’s sexual orientation is simply not your business.
It’s out of your jurisdiction.
It’s way above your pay grade.
It’s far beyond your control.

And yet Christian, because there is so much that is within your control, here is some unsolicited, but hopefully useful advice for you with whatever precious, fleeting moments you have left on this planet:

Stop spending so much time and energy trying to make gay people “not gay”—it isn’t going to happen. Ever.

Instead, try spending that time and energy, making:
hungry people not hungry,
hurting people not hurt,
lonely people not alone,
victimized people not victimized,
invisible people feel seen.
bullied people feel protected.
grieving people feel comforted.

Those things you actually can accomplish and Jesus did explicitly call you to them.
He states that this is his business and so it should be yours."

(John Pavloviyz) link

Reformers Missed Gods True Household

"However, as important as the Reformation was in restoring some 1st Century doctrines, it was largely ineffective at restoring 1st Century structures and practices."
(John White.  What Calvin and Luther didn’t know AUGUST 26, 2015)

Speaking about  the Greek "OIKOS"..... and it's central role to spiritual life, activity, gathering, and mission in the first centuries of the church.

Trying To Givile Away Tickets To A Place We Have Never Been

He nailed it with the last line.

"We are living in a time where discipleship is having a resurgence. 

Regrettably, however, many of the people who are teaching on discipleship today are ignorant of the discipleship movement that swept through North America in the mid 1970's.  Consequently, many of the mistakes that were being made in that movement are being repeated today.
And i am going to make a statement that i hope you will remember.  Countless Christians today are trying to give away tickets to a place they have never been."    

(Frank Viola)

Yep.... The issue is not lack of training, programming, classes, nor strategy; it's connection, a tangible connection with the divine many have never experienced. A connection they wish to, hope to, desire to after 5, 10, 20, 30 years of religion, but admit they have no clue where to begin..and feel powerless to help others get there....

Nobody Ever Taught Me How.....

"I know we're all going to die. I know that. But I'm going to die today, funny that, you know, to know. But the thing is  that I'm still  scared. I'm really scared. Nobody will mourn for me, no one will pray for my soul.
Will you mourn for me?
Will you say a prayer for me?
Or is it too late?
I mean, I would say one for myself but I never prayed in my life. Nobody ever taught me how. Nobody ever taught me how."

(Sandra Bullock. In Gravity)

You Dont Even Know Your Own Truth

" I think if we were given the Scriptures it was not so that we could prove we were right about everything. If we were given the Scriptures it was too humble us into realizing that God is right and the rest of us are just guessing."

(Rick Mullins)

The Ending Of Life

"Now it is like this: Keita is riddled with cancer. His spine looks like an Emmenthal cheese there are so many holes and there are tumours growing everywhere. His blood count of white blood cells or plasma cells are mass producing at an increasing rate, taking over and leaving no space for red blood cells which means he is totally anemic and has to be given  blood transfusions. But he is not bed ridden, he is walking around , talking and laughing and apart from being tired and from having bad pains in his back at night the cancer has not yet caused any major damage to his body’s function.
We went to the hospital in Bamako which has treated him since the beginning, and rather than coming up with a plan he was prescribed morphine. We know what that means of course: after morphine there is nothing. It seemed to us that he was being written off. As we were leaving the hospital a couple of orderlies were crossing the road before our car carrying a stretcher with a body wrapped up in a brightly coloured piece of cloth on their way to the morgue. ‘That will be me soon’ said Keita, and however much I tried to shake it off, we  both felt the deep chill of Destiny’s Angel passing over us…"
(Sophie. Djenne Djenno Blog)

When Making Money Costs You Too Much

An Interesting Conversation Between A Harvard Graduate And An Ordinary Fisherman
This is an interesting story about a conversation between a businessman who did MBA from Harvard and a fisherman from the local village. An American businessman was enjoying his holidays in a seaside village as he saw a very tiny boat coming. In that boat was a fisherman who was just coming back from his usual fishing. The fisherman was Mexican, he had caught a few big yellowfin tuna and he stopped at the dock. The businessman was watching him and as the fisherman came closer, he praised the fisherman for catching those quality tuna.The businessman asked him as to how long did it take him to catch them. He replied that it took him just a couple of hours. The businessman then again asked him a question, he asked him that why he didn’t spend more time there. He could have caught more fishes. The young man told him that it was enough for him and his family. He could take care of his family’s needs with the amount of fishes he had caught.
The man got a bit curious and asked the fisherman, how he spends his other time. He told him that he likes to sleep late, watch TV, spend time with his family, take his wife out, sometimes go out in the village and spend time with friends playing guitar and singing songs.
The man advised the fisherman telling him that he was a Harvard graduate and he could help him gain more profit. He told him to spend more time fishing, doing that he can catch more fish, he can earn more money which will eventually allow him to buy a bigger boat, and then maybe two and more and he can increase his business. He can make more money and start his own business.
The fisherman asked how much time will this all take, the man said maybe 15 to 20 years. The fisherman said “then what”. The man smiled and said that then you can enjoy your retirement, the money you’ve made, maybe sleep late, watch TV, spend time with your wife and children, hang out with friends in the village and play guitar.
The moral is that one should follow what really matters to him or her. You never know when you’re going after that money and all, what you really want to accomplish might already be in your hands.

LINK

What you pursue.... and pursues you....

"A friend, his wisdom anchored in his family’s exile from Uganda, offered advice in a noisy pub just before I departed:  “For each of us there are two destinies.”
I swallowed the remnants of my beer while his mug remained full; I listened.  “One is the destiny you pursue,” said Abdullah, finally taking a drink. “The other is the destiny that pursues you.”

( To Timbuktu For a Haircut. Rick Antonson )

Eating Dog Food

Are we human?

"Kathie Lee noted that Frank was born during the heart of the Great Depression and grew up in severe poverty, sometimes eating dog food as a child and "grateful to have it." He lived in 29 places as a child as his father moved around looking for work."

About her Late Husband... august 2015

The DONES are not DONE

The usual labels we assign don't apply... though insiders are convinced they do.... i have found the most vibrant I've met are on the edges... not at the center.

"The Dones are done doing things they find to be unconnected with God. Even though a stated message of the church is to be active in the community, and Jesus commanded his followers to care for the poor, the sick, and the hungry, the dechurched have experienced church as an organization that cares primarily for itself and its own members. When the dechurched leave, they take their commitment to others and to living the life they think God wants them to live. The idea that Christianity is a way of living that infuses all aspects of life is deeply appealing to the dechurched. They see their faith as the opposite of an overly individualized and self-obsessed world. They view Christianity as an antidote to a disconnected, individualized existence. When they leave the church, they take a commitment to others with them and put that commitment directly into practice."

(Church Refugees : Sociologists reveal why people are DONE with Church But Not Their Faith. Josh Packard Phd )

When Church asks for the Wrong Things

NAILED IT.....

"Finally, when the dechurched leave, they take the need to remain active with them. We began this research fully expecting to find that people were leaving the church because the church was asking them to do too much. We expected to find a lot of overworked, stressed-out people opting out of leadership responsibilities so they could take a break. This could not be further from the truth. The dechurched are, as a general rule, leaving to do more, not less. The church isn’t asking too much of people; it’s asking the wrong things of them."
( Church Refugees : Sociologists reveal why people are DONE with Church But Not Their Faith. Josh Packard Phd )

Community

"Elizabeth made this distinction clear when she said, “There are a lot of us out here who really aren’t walking away from Christianity or from Jesus. We’re walking away from the system.” And when a belief in God is the only thing they have to depend on for spiritual survival, that faith becomes a core part of who they are while organizational structures, hierarchy, and dogma tend to fall away. Those things are simply not seen as worth carrying with them on their journey...
They deeply desire to be part of a community. They find or create these communities wherever they are with whoever is around them."

( Church Refugees : Sociologists reveal why people are DONE with Church But Not Their Faith. Josh Packard Phd )

Scared

"Everybody gets scared sometimes, May Belle. You don't have to be ashamed."

(Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia)

Hungry

"I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry."

(Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground)

Cry Your Tears

"Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle."

(Charles Dickens, Great Expectations)

Time To Stop Looking At Your Watch

"Another gift was a pocket watch that clamped shut to keep out the sand. I have not worn a watch for thirty years, having once been late and missed a departing airplane that crashed. Time seemed to move along fine without having me watch it."

(To Timbuktu For a Haircut. Rick Antonson)

Pick a Stone.... And Throw It Hard For Jesus....

There, their friend took them down to a stream. It’s said to be the same stream that the historical king, David, went down to and picked up five stones from as he prepared to take on a seemingly impossible task: the giant Goliath.

“The miracle wasn’t that the shepherd boy was able to kill the giant,” she explained. “The miracle was that the shepherd boy, who had all the skills he would ever need in life, trusted in a living God. Not a religion, but a living God.”

Frank grabbed a stone.

That moment left a lasting impression on him. In fact, it changed him so much that when people came over to his house he wouldn’t take them to his Hall of Fame bust or his Emmy awards, but rather the small stone he plucked out of the stream.

That started a tradition in the family. The couple’s kids, Cassidy and Cody, both got stones when they graduated high school and college shortly after.

“And we said to her, ‘Cass, where you going to throw your stone for the kingdom of God? What is your stone and where are you going to throw it?’ A week later, Cody graduated from college … he got a stone.”

She had a challenge.

“If you ever leave a legacy for your children, let it be that you’ve taught them friendship with God, and that you’ve taught them to find their stone. And show it, show it. Throw it hard and well and transform this hurting world that needs God’s love so much.”

(Kathie Lee Gifford.About HEr Husband Frank Who Died. Her story on air on August 18th, 2015)

Intriguingly Church

"I discovered that I could have a more fruitful connection with people and share Jesus’ life more freely without all the accoutrements, political intrigue, and routine that our institutions force on fellowship...

Unfortunately, however, an entire industry has emerged in trying to make them just another system. Sometimes called house church, simple church, or organic church...

I’ve been in home groups that had more hoops to jump through than many congregations...

The problem is not the venue; it is our preoccupation with anything other than him...

My counsel is always the same : Avoid starting something. Once you start some “thing” your focus will shift from connecting with people to ensuring that the “thing” goes well."

(Finding Church. Wayne Jacobsen)

Language Is A Flash Of The Human Spirit

"When each of you were born there where 6000 languages spoken on the planet. A language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. A language is a flash of the human spirit. It's a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world.

Every language is an old growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, and ecosystem of spiritual possibilities... today... fully half are no longer whispered into the ears of children, they're no longer being taught to babies." 

(Wade Davis: Dreams From Endangered Cultures. TED Talk)Rob Baker

A Museum Of Memories In My Soul

"The most important question is not, do I remember my memory accurately? .... The most important thing.... is to ask these questions:

Why have I chronicle these particular memories?
Why have I remembered them the way I have remembered?
How do they help me live and believe as I do?

This is the process of narrative spiritual formation. I have built a museum of memories in my soul."

(Tony Kriz. Aloof)

Human Story

"Storytelling is an important spiritual practice. It may even be essential to the way we humans have been designed.

You see, our stories are precious things. They are the foundation of our beliefs. They are the fuel of our hope. My soul has forgotten most of my stories. They have long ago drifted away into the fog. However, there are a precious few that my soul vigorously holds on to."

(Tony Kriz. Aloof)

How Light Gets In......

"We are all broken. That's how the light gets in." - Hemingway

When Our New Thing Becomes The Old Thing

"As institutions age they tend to harden into intransigent systems and displace the simplicity of life in Christ for their own needs. Our two-thousand-year-old experiment proves that whenever we convey the life of the Spirit to an institutional arrangement, the institution wins—not always quickly, but eventually.

While I’m grateful for the good they have accomplished they don’t seem to be able to sustain a community of love nor display an accurate reflection of God’s character.

How many congregations, mission groups, and Bible studies began as a small group of people in a home burned out on the rigidity of their previous group, hopeful for a better reflection of his life and love? Soon they grow into the very organization they had fled with the hope that this time all will go well because they have better people in charge. What they don’t realize is that organizational needs shape its leaders, not the other way around. Many start out well intentioned, hoping to reform the institution and bring it back in line with the priorities of Jesus. That effort is usually short-lived as the needs of the institution to protect the influence and resources of the group require greater control in the hands of fewer people. The simplicity of loving one another will eventually get swallowed up in the process no matter how hard we try to resist. In the end, our institutions end up just like everyone else’s."

( Finding Church. Wayne Jacobsen )

Wouldn't One Religion Be Different?

"During my first trip to Israel, I was a little put off by some of the people on our pastor’s tour who were trying to convert our Jewish guide, Abraham. They kept making snide asides to him as to why he wouldn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah. On the last day we stood by the bus as we were waiting for others to bring their bags from the hotel. I asked him if he had been offended by some of the things said to him on this trip. He passed it off with a wave. “Not at all,”he answered. “I’ve been doing this for twenty years. Everyone tries to convert me to their religion—Catholics, Pentecostals, Baptists, Reformed Jews, Orthodox Jews, Mormons, Muslims—everyone.”Then he looked up at me with a smile. “Would you like to know why none of them convince me?”“I would!”I replied. “Come with me,”he said as he led me around the front of the bus and onto the edge of the road. “Do you see that building down there with the Star of David on it?”“Yes.”“That’s ours.”“Do you see that steeple with the cross on it across the way?”I nodded. “That’s yours.”And then he pointed me toward the dome of a mosque on a hillside not far away. I nodded. “That’s theirs.”I smiled trying to imagine what he’d say next. “Take off the Star of David, the cross, and the dome, and underneath aren’t they really all the same thing? You would think if one of us were serving the Living God, it would look different.”He was right. Christianity doesn’t look any different from the outside."
(Finding Church. Wayne Jacobsen )

Unlearning.... More Than Learning

"Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything. Maybe it's about un-becoming everything that isn't really you so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place."

Good Hearted People Or Leadership?

"I trust good-hearted people listening to Jesus more than I trust any hierarchy whose perspective is so easily skewed by the needs of their institution orthe realities that let them hold on to power. The historic heresies have not arisen from simple people following Jesus, but from someone trying to gain a large following."
- Wayne Jacobsen

Suffering Beautiful People.......

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."
(Elisabeth Kubler—Ross)

It's My Journey.

"I think it's my adventure, my trip, my journey, and I guess my attitude is, let the chips fall where they may." (Leonard Nimoy)

Poverty is like..........

"Living Poor is like being sentenced to exist in a stormy sea in a battered canoe, requiring all your strength simply to keep afloat; there is never any question of reaching a destination. True poverty is a state of perpetual crisis, and one wave just a little bigger or coming from an unexpected direction can and usually does wreck things."

( Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure : A Journey On Two Rivers)

Burn Down The Old One

"l was frightened but exhilarated. I had been only four years in the country but I had seen enough to hate the government and its timidities and in-efficiencies, the corruption of the police, and the shameless way the people were raped by the ruling families. I hoped that it was finally happening, that the whole poisonous and feudal system that enslaved the country would come crashing down. I had always dimly felt that when the people of Ecuador would gather together to topple the ever-changing but identical regimes that kept them slaves, that the terror would begin among the wild free Negroes of the coast, those men of spontaneity, vengeance, and emotion. If in their ignorance and their passion they would be unable to construct a new and fairly decent social system, at least they were capable of burning down the old one."
( Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure : A Journey On Two Rivers)

Loneliness

"I stand at the window feeling the real beginnings of loneliness, or rather, feeling the beginnings of a desperation that I had anticipated and come looking for.  (Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure: A Journey On Two Rivers )

House Without A Planet

"What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" #Thoreau

Trust..... Bust

"There is no respect between the souls of two individuals if their minds can’t trust each other and there is no trust between them if their hearts can’t accept the truth of each other."
Anuj Somany

Free From Becoming A "Somebody"

"... what it would be like to be free, free from the need to be spectacular, free from my addiction to people's applause, free from the burden of being a somebody."

(Jim Palmer. Divine Nobodies : Shedding Religion To Find God - And the unlikely people who help you.)

Little Papacy Style Leadership

"During the last thirty-five years or so I have had the privilege of traveling to many countries and observing the church and it's leadership. As a result, it is my firm conviction that there is too much autocracy in the leaders of the Christian community, in defiance of the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, and not enough love and gentleness. Too many behave as if they believed not in the priesthood of all believers but in the papacy of all pastors." - John R. W. Stott

Strangling Brennan Manning For This One.

When I get to heaven, I am going to find this man, and I am going to hug him in my sure fishermans grip, so hard, Brennan will beg God for My mercy.

"Recent studies have shown that the average congregation on a Sunday morning can tolerate only fifteen seconds of silence before someone feels compelled to break it with an announcement, a song, a prophecy, or whatever.

Ironically, the church itself often impedes our efforts to reach inward and upward toward God.

As Parker Palmer notes: "Too often the church is an enemy of our solitude. Too often the church is one more agent in the vast social conspiracy of togetherness and noise aimed at distracting us from encountering ourselves. The church keeps us busy on this cause or that, this committee or that, trying to provide meaning through motion until we get “burned out” instead and withdraw from the church’s life. Even in its core act of worship the church provides little space for the silent and solitary inward journey to occur (sometimes filling the available space with noisy exhortations to take that very journey!)."

When the glory of the transcendent God is not addressed, our focus shifts to human behavior, the cultivation of virtues and the extirpation of vices, the qualities of discipleship, and so on. Personal responsibility replaces personal response to God, and we become engrossed in our efforts to grow in holiness. Our primary concern becomes our spiritual, intellectual, and emotional well-being. When other Christians ask us if we are happy, we automatically respond in the affirmative or brush them off with a benevolent smile even if we are close to tears."

(Brennan Manning. Ruthless Trust )

Bible Whisky

"Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results."

(Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird)

Divided Because Of Our Shepherds.

"The reason we don't see one flock today is because we have hundreds of thousands of would-be shepherds leading people to follow their mission, vision, or program. Jesus said we'd be one flock when we have one shepherd. As long as we have thousands of men and women claiming to lead on his behalf and ensuring loyalty to themselves and their program, we will find ourselves in conflict with God's goal to bring all things together in him."

- Wayne Jacobsen

Why Speak of Brokenness In The Past Tense?

"The worst thing we do as a church is that we like to talk about our brokenness in the past tense."

- Jamie The Very Worst Missionary

Religious Obligation Enforcers

"The undercurrent to a life of obligation is the belief that God is not endearing, and life in him is not engaging. Until we see that the life of Jesus is the most engaging invitation we’ve ever been extended, we won’t find our way into its joy. Knowing him will make all he wants for us an
irresistible reality."

- Wayne Jacobsen

Churching The Church Right Out Of Me.

“I guess the church just sort of churched the church out of me.” (youth)

(Josh Packard. Church Refugees)

O Divine Madman

"Fourteenth-century mystic Catherine of Siena is one of three women who have been honored by Catholic Christianity as Doctor of the Church, because of the depth of her writings on the spiritual life. She often began her prayers, “O Divine Madman.” When this brilliant, fiery Italian woman was asked to describe the God of her journey, she whispered, “He is pazzo d’amore, ebro d’amore”—he is crazed with love, drunk with love."

(Brennan Manning. Ruthless Trust)

As Big As You Will Ever Get!

"You won, this time. But you are as big as you are ever going to get. And I’m still growing."

– Sir Edmund Hillary (to a picture of Mt. Everest after his first unsuccessful summit attempt)

Painless Music

"One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain."
(Bob Marley)

Human Failure Is Only Sure Church Thing

"Human failure is the only sure thing that happens in church."
(Paul Russell)

Source...

"Much of my growth in the Christian faith has been provoked from places far outside the Christian church."
(Tony Kriz. Neighbors and Wisemen)

What The Sun Lights Up Willingly

But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;.."

(Poem: Daisies, by Mary Oliver)

By Our Sweat Rather Than God's Provision

Second Agers are prone to get stuck on “by the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread,” (Gen 3:19) rather than “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory .” (Phil 4:19)

(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Wilderness Is A Fountain of Life.

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.”

(John Muir)

Take Off Your Religious Work Boots

"When we get faith formidable, we take off our work boots and put on our dancing shoes . Then we begin to rock and roll the world."
(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Rediscovered Jesus Springs

What is more foundational that all this talk about the church suffering from a lack  "leadership" and "vision".  Those are the easy things....

<blockquoye>"Those who desire holiness must learn and relearn to play with God. God-pleasing and Godplaying replace goal seeking and vision casting. Does your church life revolve around goals? Do you go through a vision-casting process every five years? Or do you seek to be quick to fall on your knees and spring fast on your feet to be the people of God in every walk of life? Participation in God’s nature is the true goal of human life"
(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)
</blockquote>

Right or wrong, and not suggesting that making plans is evil, but for a long long time i have felt the real issue is not lack of vision, nor lack of leadership from people like me, or a lack of leadership toward me from others...

There is something deeper, more guttural we are not addressing with the bows and ribbons we are constantly playing with... Well the bows and ribbons I played with for 15 years.....  Anyway, How do you measure transformation? The only thing Jesus said is "by their fruit you will know them."   How do we lead, and vision cast a people who lost their "spring" and their "fall"? - that Leonard writes about...

If they have a living "spring",  "fall",  and "walk" my experience is they have no lack of vision and no need of my leadership.  
The book of Collosians may have the only answer. When the people are off track, there is immorality, false teaching, a loss of love for others and  for Jesus.... Paul's solution in Colossians was simple... to unfold a greater revelation of the person of Jesus.   The only one who gives "springs", fixes "springs", and invented "springs"... no reason to spring without him. Can't  help but "spring" with him....

Problems We Have Or Problems We Are?

"Jesus didn’t come just to save us from problems we have, but from the problem we are." (Myron S. Augsburger)

My Mark Our Our Music?

"Transitioning from making my mark, to let us make music."
(Andy Rayner)

Learning to Dance With A Partner

"Whereas a First Ager discovers his or her song and learns to sing it in the world, a Second Ager learns to dance with a partner and to make music within a symphony of voices."

(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Explaining Away God's Beauty

"Exuding a brisk air of professional enthusiasm and a suffocating spirit of hubris, I expostulated so brilliantly on the mystery of God that after one semester, there was no mystery left.
When I heard an elderly and saintly friar in the monastery comment, “The older I get, the less I understand about God,” I assumed that it was his sincere attempt at modesty. Secretly, however, I pitied his shallowness. Looking back now, I shudder at my “profundity"
(Brennan Manning. Ruthless Trust.)

The treasury of a people’s memory is found in their songs

"The treasury of a people’s memory is found in their songs. If we want to teach First Agers to play with God, to play in God’s Garden, to “wake up” and go out in mission into the world for service in the “playing field of life,” then we must teach them the songs of our faith, along with their narratives and metaphors. These are the songs that make the lips quiver and the spine shiver and turn acts of faith into acts of art."

( Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Scripture to Precious to Be Left To Biblical scholars

"Sacred scripture is too important to be left exclusively to biblical scholars. Theology is too vital to be consigned solely to the province of theologians. To explore the depths of the God who invites our trust, we need the artists and mystics."

(Brennan Manning. Ruthless Trust.)

Wanting It To Be Something Other Than What It Is

"God has a way to nudge you into life.....To know this, God is at work in the world, He's at work in your life. If you don't see it right now, it's not because he is not doing it, it's because you want it to be something other than it is. And If you relax into this, and let it be what it is, he will lead you into a bigger space than you ever dreamed of, or would ever find on your own. "

 (Wayne Jacobsen​ The God Journey​ Podcast, April 17, 2005))

tell the stories that prove that the life of faith can be lived in every place

"Meanwhile there is Jeremiah, and the people like him who keep showing up in our homes and communities and churches, who go beyond the boundaries of what is safe and comfortable, learn new languages, discover alien cultures, brave hostility and misunderstanding, and who have the scars and tell the stories that prove that the life of faith can be lived in every place and among all peoples— must be lived in every place, among all peoples."
-- Eugene Peterson, "Run with the Horses"

Walking By A Different Vision

For you who walk a different path, differently.
As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

Common Sense Of The Morning.

"It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning."

(H.G. Wells, The Time Machine)

Crowds Lie, Make Us Spectaculars And Slogans.

Sigh..................      "In crowds the truth is flattened to fit a slogan.... The crowd makes spectators of us, passive in the presence of excellence or beauty. The crowd makes consumers of us, inertly taking in whatever is pushed at us. As spectators and consumers the central and foundational elements of our being human— our ability to create, our drive to excel, our capacity to commune with God— atrophy.
(Eugene Peterson, "Run With the Horses)
Thanks Karl Ingersoll