Latest Studies More Important Than Jesus?

"Right at the heart of this alienation lies the absence of Jesus the teacher from our lives.  Strangely, we seem prepared to learn how to live from almost anyone but him. We are ready to believe that the "latest studies" have more to teach us about love and sex than he does, and that Louis Rukeyser knows more about finances. "Dear Abby" can teach us more about how to get along with our family members and co-workers, and Carl Sagan is a better authority on the cosmos. We lose any sense of the difference between information and wisdom, and act accordingly.
Where we spontaneously look for "information" on how to live shows how we truly feel and who we really have confidence in."

(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)

Dallas Willard

The Pathetic Guesses of Philosophy

"We have so persistently dissembled the power of the Gospel. . . that it is pardonable if those who judge of it by us
should doubt whether it is anything more efficacious and inspiring than the pathetic guesses which adorn the writings of philosophy."

(Canon B.F. Westcott. The Gospel Of Resurrection.)

God is not Pushy

"The obviously well kept secret of the ordinary is that it is made to be a receptacle of the divine, a place where the life of God flows. But the divine is not pushy." 

~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy

Why Does Jesus Endure?

And what is it, really that explains the enduring relevance of Jesus to human life?.......
I think we finally have to to say that Jesus' enduring relevance is based on his historically proven ability to speak to, to heal and empower the individual human condition. He matters because of what he brought and what he still brings to ordinary human beings, living their ordinary lives ad coping daily with their surroundings.

Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy

More than Making the Cut

"Does Jesus only enable me to "make the cut" when I die? Or to know what to protest, or how to vote or agitate and organize? It is good to know that when I die all will be well. but is there any good new for life?

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

I Don't Know What To Do About It

"The mantle of intellectual meaningless shrouds every aspect of our common life. Events, things, and "information" flood over us, overwhelming us, disorienting us with threats and possibilities we for the most part have no idea what to do about."
Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy

God is About Redemption as Mission

Commenting on Romans 1:1, where is says Paul is,  "Set apart for the Gospel of God."

"Our calling is not primarily to be holy men and women, but to be proclaimers of the gospel of God. The one all-important thing is that the gospel of God should be recognized as the abiding reality. Reality is not human goodness, or holiness, or heaven, or hell - it is redemption....
God cannot deliver me while my interest is merely in my own character."

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest

"Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel...." 1 Cor 1:17. Paul states here that the call of God is to preach the gospel. But remember what Paul means by "The Gospel", namely, the reality of redemption in our Lord Jesus Christ. We are inclined to make sanctification the goal of our preaching..... We are not commissioned to preach salvation or sanctification - we are commissioned to lift up Jesus (See John 12:32) it is an injustice to say that Jesus Christ labored to make me a saint, Jesus Christ labored in redemption to redeem the whole world and to place it perfectly whole and restored before the throne of God."

Registering for Jesus' Class

The really good news for humanity is that Jesus is now taking students in the master class of life......So the message of and about him is specifically a gospel for our life now, not just for dying.It is about living now as his apprentice in kingdom living, not just as a consumer of his merits. Our future, however far we look, is a natural extension of the faith by which we live now and the life in which we participate. Eternity is now in flight and we with it, like it or not."

Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy

What Jesus said is Best - But I Don't Have To Follow It????

"It is a failure to understand Jesus and his words as reality and vital information about life that explains why, we do not routinely teach those who profess allegiance to him how to do what he said was best.......

Whatever the ultimate explanation of it, the most telling thing about the contemporary Christian is that he or she simply has no compelling sense that understanding of and conformity with the clear teachings of Christ is of any vital importance to his or her life,and certainly not that it is in any way essential."

~ Dallas Willard. The Diving Conspiracy  

Be a Jesus Flute

“I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through— listen to this music.”

Fourteenth-century Sufi mystic Hafiz

God is Saving History

"I don’t think you can understand Scripture in any honest way unless you know that its primary arc is a salvation of history and creation itself, and today’s individualism is regressive. All the covenants are with the people collectively— the “house” and the future. Individuals like Abraham, Noah, and David are only the instruments."

(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance )

What Happened Between Age Six And Sixty?

"The Indwelling Spirit is this constant ability of humanity to keep going, to keep recovering from its wounds, to keep hoping and trying again. I think one thing we love so much about young children is their indomitable hope, curiosity, and desire to grow. They fall down, and soon they’re all grins again. Another generation is going to try again to live life to the fullest. But too often, by the time they’re my age they don’t smile so much at all, and we ask, “What happened between six and sixty?”

(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)

Protecting Ourselves From The Word Of God

"(Jesus words) They are essentially subversive of the established arrangements and ways of thinking. That is clear from the way they first entered the world,  their initial effects,  and how they are preserved in the New Testament writings and live on in his people. He himself described his words as "spirit and life" (John 6:63)  They invade our real world with a reality even more than it is, which explains why human beings then and now have to protect themselves against them."

(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)

Only If God Wants It To.....

"All that is not the love of God has no meaning for me. I can truthfully say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my word and witness. If He wants it to, my life will bear fruit through my prayers and sacrifices. But the usefulness of my life is His concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that."

(Brennan Manning. All is Grace )

It's OK Not To Be OK

"So I told him, told him everything, about my disgust with my own motives and my thoughts of walking away from it all. In that moment he said a powerful thing, a life-changing thing: “You are on the threshold of receiving the greatest grace of your life. You are discovering what it means to be poor in spirit. Brother Brennan, it’s okay not to be okay.”My gut reaction was, This guy’s a loon. But then he led me to the first Beatitude as translated from the New English Bible: How blessed are those who know that they are poor, the kingdom of Heaven is theirs."
(Brennan Manning. All is Grace)

Neither Burning Nor Theological

"The village didn’t have running water, so each morning I would ride out in a donkey-driven buckboard with a water tank in the back. I would later return with the prized possession, water. To say I was popular with the people is an understatement. One of my realizations in such an earthy atmosphere was that many of the burning theological issues in the church were neither burning nor theological. It was not more rhetoric that Jesus demanded but personal renewal, fidelity to the gospel, and creative conduct."

(Brennan Manning. All is Grace)

Jesus Deals in Feathers?

"My hope is to gain a fresh hearing for Jesus, especially among those who believe they already understand him. In this case, quite frankly, presumed familiarity has lead to unfamiliarity, unfamiliarity has lead to contempt, and contempt has lead to profound ignorance.

Very few people today find Jesus interesting as a person or if  vital relevance to the course of their lives. He is not generally regarded as a real-life personality who deals with real-life issues but is thought to be concerned with the feathery realm other than the one we must deal with, and must deal with now. And frankly, he is not taken to be a person of much ability. "

(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)

Life Has No Opposite

"Life has no real opposite; death is merely a transitioning, which takes trust every time we walk through it."

Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance

Want Conclusions Without the Process

"By and large, what human beings want is resurrection without death, answers without doubt, light without darkness, the conclusion without the process."

(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)

Joining Jesus And Christ

"In the second person of the Trinity, we have the visible epiphany of the Unmanifest One. First in the form of creation itself— which is “the Christ” in our shorthand— and secondly in personal form, whom we call “Jesus.” Someone who reverences the first epiphany (apophatic, sat) is surely best prepared to rightly reverence the second— kataphasis, chit. Up to now, we’ve led many people to love Jesus, but many less were led to recognize, honor, and love the Christ. The major future task of Christian theology and practice is to finally join the two together."

(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)

Silent Friend

“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.”

~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

A Friend

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.”
~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

More Power

The temptation to consider power an apt instrument for the proclamation of the gospel is the greatest temptation of all.

~ Henri Nouwen

Faith People Bring Freedom

"During President Trump’s speech in Warsaw, Poland, on Thursday, he memorialized Pope John Paul II’s momentous 1979 visit to the city.

For many historians, the Polish-born pope’s Mass in Victory Square, more than anything else, set in motion the events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall a decade later and the dissolution of the Soviet Union soon thereafter. The people in attendance knew exactly what President Trump meant when he spoke of how the millions of Poles attending that Mass “did not ask for wealth. They did not ask for privilege. Instead, one million Poles sang three simple words: ‘We want God.’”

The Dangers of Arrogant Ignorance, by Jonah Goldberg. July 7, 2017 12:00 AM. National Review

Please, BE Guilty By Association

"For Christians, "guilt by association" is NOT A THING. If your friendships aren't diverse enough to bewilder others, you're doing it wrong."

Jonathan Martin

Trinity Explained

"God for us, we call you Father.
God alongside us, we call you Jesus.
God within us, we call you Holy Spirit.
You are the eternal mystery that enables, enfolds, and enlivens all things,
Even us and even me."

~Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance

The Humility Words Require.

"Most of us do not know the ground of silence before speaking, the spaciousness around words, the inner repose after words, the humility that words should require."

~Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance

They Day We Stopped Dancing

"This now-evident pattern is why so many of our contemporary spiritual teachers say that most of our problems are psychological in their manifestation, but spiritual in their solution. Most Christians of the Middle Ages more easily trusted the spiritual solution than we do, but they seldom had the vocabulary to describe the psychological manifestations as we do today. We articulate the psychological dimensions so well, and in so many ways, that contemporary people are trapped in sophisticated and helpful descriptions of the manifestations but have no One to surrender it all to. There is no Receiver Station, because we jumped off the divine waterwheel and withdrew from the dance."

~Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance

Can't Trust You Because I Can't Trust Me

"People accuse me of all kinds of things, both wonderful and terrible. They’re usually half-right, of course. But invariably, they’re talking about themselves, and they can’t see it. This principle of likeness has positive and negative manifestations— what you see over there is what you are in here. Always. Mistrustful people don’t know how to trust themselves or anybody else, and so they lay it on you."

~Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance

The Liberality Of Hateful People

"Hateful people see hatred everywhere else, have you noticed that? They’re always thinking someone’s out to screw them over, someone’s trying to hurt them. They create problems wherever they go. We call them “high-maintenance” people."

~Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance

Living A Stingy Vengeful Christian Life

"If you are still a black-and-white, rigid thinker who needs certitude and control at every step—well, the Trinity will feel out of reach. Grace shows up where logic breaks down, so you won’t go very far. No matter what passage is given to you, you will interpret it in a stingy, vengeful, controlling way—because that’s the way you do life."

~Richard Rohr. The Divine

God Can't Love You Less

"God cannot not see his Son Jesus in you. You are the body of Christ. You are bone of God’s bone, and that’s why God cannot stop loving you. That’s why no amount of effort will make God love you any more than God loves you right now. And despite your best efforts to be terrible, you can’t make God love you any less than God loves you right now."

~Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance.

Fake Transaction Forgiveness

"The trouble with so much conventional religion is this cultural attitude of, “Well, I’ll forgive when they’ve earned it, when they’ve proven themselves.”That’s not forgiveness—that’s a deal! God loves you precisely in your obstinate unworthiness, when you’re still a mixture of good and bad, when you’re gloriously in flux. You’re not a perfectly loving person, and God still totally loves you. When you can participate in that mystery of being loved, even as the mixed bag that you are, you can receive the gift of the forgiveness. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s the only magnetic center that knows how to forgive other people—especially when people have really screwed you, really betrayed you, really abandoned you, really humiliated you. And sooner or later, this happens to all of us."

~Richard Rohr. The Divine

We've Seen Empires Rise and Fall in Djenne

When the Jihadists attacked the north and seemed to be on the march towards Djenné in 2012 I decided to leave for the south. I remember asking Yelfa if he would leave if things took a bad turn in Djenné. He did not really understand what I meant at first. The he just laughed and said “leave Djenné? never! I realized that his forefathers have seen empires raise and fall for a thousand years in Djenné...

Swiss lady Sophia, Djenne Djenno Blogspot.com