Who's Your Center?

“When Jesus asked people to ‘repent and believe’ the gospel, he was not asking them to be sorry for their sins and embrace an orthodox theology. He was asking them to forfeit their own agenda and embrace his. That’s the invitation to the kingdom. It is not whether we want to go to heaven or hell, but whether we want to trust God or continue trusting ourselves.” 

~ Wayne Jacobsen

How About A Different Mind?

"Most people have not been offered a different mind, only different behaviors, beliefs, and belonging systems. They do not necessarily nourish us, much less transform us. But they invariably secure us and invalidate us where we already are. They are what I and others have called "the task of the first half of Life."

Required behaviors and beliefs are good and necessary to get us started. But when we invest in them too heavily, they soon become places to hide.... If we hold on to them too tightly and for too long, we never internalize values and strengths - we never grow up.

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now.

When I Am Fooled

"The ego as such is not evil, but it can lead us to do evil without realizing it. To succeed, evil somehow has to look like virtue. It leaves you blind to your own Illusions and convinced that you see perfectly."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now

Disappointment

"The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood shed with him."

- Henry David Thoreau

Growing Up

"The Process of growing up is rarely serene." 

- Roland Rolheiser. Sacred Fire

Difference Between Tradition And Bad Habits

 "One of the biggest problems in this first step is discerning the difference between “tradition” and “bad habits.” A helpful metaphor in making the distinction is that of scaffolding. When we construct a church building we use scaffolding. But when the church is completed, we take down the scaffolding. How ridiculous it would seem if ten, twenty, or thirty years later the scaffolding was still up. Unfortunately, a lot of churches refuse to take the scaffolding down, clinging to it as if it were the church. They have confused the “scaffolding” of institutions with the “tradition” of the saints."

-Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Transcultural Truths

"Trust combines exegesis with ethnology as one tracks the transcultural truths of the faith. The AncientFuture Christian lives out of the past, not in it."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Self Assembled Spirituality

"To a culture where “any place can be a church, any song a prayer, and any person, a priest” (as one Gen Xer put it), popular culture becomes even more important as spirituality is self-assembled."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Contemporay Static

"To avoid becoming an obedient lapdog or a rebellious hippie, leadership that is missional, relational, and incarnational must learn to distinguish between that which aids in the transmission of the gospel and that which is merely contemporary static.

 A missional, relational, and incarnational church gladly uses all the technological advances of culture to help it witness more effectively to a technological world. The only authentic inculturation is “inculturation from below,” in which “below” includes whatever is on the streets, from the poor and oppressed to popular culture."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Want to Study Evil Power Stalin Wins???

"Joseph Stalin is what we would call the gold standard of dictatorship. Obviously we are not talking about morality here. We are talking about accumulating and exercising power. If you are interested in power, where it comes from, how it works, and what are the consequences when someone exercises such power, then Stalin is your guy. There are very few people in his category. Hitler, Mao, snd that is about it. Hitler was in power for just twelve years. Stalin was in power for three  decades. Mao was also in power for an etended peroid of time but didn't have the military industural power complex "super power" that Stalin built. So Stalin really stands out, even in his peers."

- Stephen Kotkin, author

of Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

 

What Is A "Royal" Priesthood?

"The Priestly vocation consists of summing up the Praises of creation before the Creator; the Royal vocation, in turn, means reflecting God's wisdom and justice into the world."

- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began. 

When Do You Shower?

"My ministers and I regularly talked about the importance of our economy of those who shower after work, not just those who shower before it. We wanted Working Class People and those who wish to pursue a career in the trades to be respected and valued."

- Stephen Harper. Right Here Right Now 

The Church Through Time

"The incarnational Christian realizes that the gospel travels through time not in some ideal form, but from one inculturated form to another. In the words of one theologian, the “fiction” of a “‘pure’ and ‘naked’ Christianity” has done much damage. What missiologists call “the culturally indigenous church” is the aim of the incarnational church. Max Stackhouse makes a distinction between the “textuality” of the church—its faithfulness to the gospel—and its “contextuality”—its faithfulness to the world in which it finds itself. That distinction is absolutely critical." 

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

The Gospel is Supranational

"Lesslie Newbigin rightly insists that the gospel only retains “its proper strangeness, its power to question us … when we are faithful to its universal suprarational, supranational, supracultural nature.”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Jesus Dressed, Spoke, and Lived The Culture

"When Jesus dressed, he did not dress in a generic, cultureneutral way or put on clothing that set him apart from everyone else of his day. He dressed himself in the customary garb of the day where he lived. He spoke the language of the day in which he lived. He fully inhabited the cultural space of the first century."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Are We Really a Church Above Our Times?

"The problem with the countercultural model is that it creates an artificial wall between Christians and the world God loves—a love so deep and wide that God sent Jesus to die for it. Jesus did not ask God to take us out of the world. In fact, Jesus’ opposition to the temple-based religion of his day, which led more than anything to his condemnation and death, was precisely because he opposed the temple cult’s concept of holiness as separation. We are not somehow grandly “above” the political, economic, scientific, technological, or artistic influences of our times."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0 

The New Spirit Or The Now Spirit?

"These churches become so painfully “politically correct” that any attempt to articulate a transcultural value judgment, a moral absolute, or a biblical truth is quickly shuttled away to a committee or task force (a representatively correct one, of course) instead of witnessed to the world. 

The church is to identify with the world’s needs, but not its desires. As St. Augustine pointed out, “We move spiritually not by our feet, but by our desires.” When our desires are shaped by the culture and not by the Spirit, we become children of the times, not children of the Spirit. The “new spirit” promised by the Scriptures becomes a “now” spirit. We are to be “at home” but not “at peace” with God’s chosen place and time for us. There is a basic incompatibility between the church and whatever time in which it lives.

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0 

Golden Retriever Churches

"Everyone knows these “golden retriever” churches. If the culture throws a stick, “golden retriever” churches go bounding after it, slobbering and eager to please. Even those who happily own these indiscriminately accepting animals bemoan the fact that if a burglar broke in, the dog would just hold the flashlight for him. Too many inculturated churches are holding too many flashlights for too many burglarizing forces and figures."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Off The Mountain!

"Like the top of a mountain that provides a great view of what has been and what might be but is no place to live, the past must not be dehistoricized or abstracted from the real world. Stay on the mountain, and you don’t hear the robin’s song or the loon’s haunting cry; you don’t see the fields of clover or smell the fragrance of flowers. To live, one must go down and enter the world. One must “enflesh” the world for it to be claimed by God."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Barking Tingue

"When anger's busy in the brain Thy idly-barking tongue restrain."

- Sappho. 7th Century BC Greek Lyric Poet 

Has Time Removed The Good Ones?

"Now since a human being cannot so separate himself from himself for a time, and make a break in his continuity, and then approach himself again—and that is perhaps the chief reason why a man is a worse judge of himself than of others—the next best thing will be for a man to inspect his friends after an interval, and likewise offer himself to their scrutiny, not to see whether he has aged quickly, or whether his bodily condition is better or worse, but to examine his moral character, and see whether time has added any good quality, or removed any bad one."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher

You Need Not Go Contrary To Your Convictions

"I find it by no means hard, or bad manners, to listen silently, and not to be so illiberal as to praise contrary to one's convictions. For if in such matters you are not master of yourself, what will you do if your friend reads a poor poem, or parades a speech stupidly and ridiculously written? 651 You will praise it of course, and join the flatterers in loud applause. But how then will you find fault with your friend if he makes mistakes in business? How will you be able to correct him, if he acts improperly in reference to some office, or marriage, or the state?"

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals 

Talebearers

"Indeed tyrants themselves, who must know all things, are made unpopular by no class more than by their spies and talebearers."

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals 1st Century Greek Philosopher 

The Moral Disease Of Curiosity?

"One such mental disease, that immediately suggests itself to one, is curiosity, the desire to know other people's troubles, a disease that seems neither free from envy nor malignity. 

"Malignant wretch, 

why art so keen to mark 

Thy neighbour's fault, 

and seest not thine own?"

Shift your view, and turn your curiosity so as to look inwards: if you delight to study the history of evils, you have copious material at home, "as much as there is water in the Alizon, or leaves on the oak," such a quantity of faults will you find in your own life, and passions in your soul, and shortcomings in your duty."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher 

Is God & Christianity Beautiful?

"Over the years, the questions I’ve heard from the people around me have moved steadily in the direction of whether or not Christianity and its God are  "desirable" Are they not only true, but also good and beautiful? This current emphasis fits right in with the task of cultural apologetics. Paul Gould says in his book "Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World. 

"These three universal longings, for truth, goodness, and beauty, can serve as fitting starting points for a cultural apologetic…. Humanity was made to be nourished on them."

 - Amy K. Hall Stand To Reason

You Get White Cross Then!

"The second point of special interest for us is the way in which the Romans sometimes used crucifixion as a way of mocking a victim with social or political pretensions. "You want to be high and lifted up?" hey said in effect. "All right, we'll give you 'high and lifted up'". Crucifixion thus meant not only killing by slow torture, not only shaming, not only issuing a warning, but also parodying the Ambitions of the uppity Rrebels. They wanted to move up the social scale? Let them be lifted up above the common herd, then - on a cross! When the emperor Galba was governor of his native Spain, a man condemned to crucifixion objected that he was a Roman citizen. Galba's response was to make his cross higher than before and to have it painted white, signifying his high social status."

- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began 

Dance And Drum Depression Healing

"The Rwandan prescription for Depression: Sun, drum, dance, community. “We had a lot of trouble with western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide and we had to ask some of them to leave. They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better, there was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again, there was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy, there was no acknowledgement of the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out again. Instead they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave.” 

~A Rwandan talking to a western writer, Andrew Solomon, about his experience with western mental health and depression."

- underthebluedoor.org

The Rabid Bite If A Boy

"“But why married, Lise? What makes you talk of such a thing? It’s quite out of place and perhaps the boy was rabid.” 

“Why, mamma! As though there were rabid boys!” 

“Why not, Lise, as though I had said something stupid! Your boy might have been bitten by a mad dog and he would become mad and bite anyone near him."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov.

(Conversation between Madame Hohlakov and daughter Lise)

The contrmplative mind is a different mind that does not read the moment in terms of us and them, right or wrong, black or white, gay or straight, catholic or protestant. It  just,  "It  Is". You can see what detachment from your own ego that necessitates. Let each moment be what it is without pigeonholing it. Without putting in in some catorgory, up or down, in or out, with me or agaianst me. If we don't learn this.....  nothing will change..... Even our church; utterly divided between liberals and conservatives. Both convinced that the other has nothing to tell them, which is NEVER true. And, of course, the contemplative mind is the only one who can know that becuse they do not divide the field of the moment."

- Richard Rohr

"I simply began to pray for forgiveness, thinking the cherries might line up and the light atop the machine would flash, spilling shiny tokens of good fate. What I was doing was more in line with superstition than spirituality. But it worked. .... I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back."

- Donald Millar. Blue Like Jazz

"Most people have not been offered a different mind, only different behaviors, beliefs, and belonging systems."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now

The participatory revolution. That is a word Bruner Barnhart used. That religion is not an experience of observation - of something over there - and if you understand it, and you agree with it, and you affirm it, then you are saved. 

We can't  get by with that anymore because it isn't true. It just isn't true! Religion as attendance, religion as a spectator sport watching the right theatre pieces, watching the right sacraments observed validly is, somehow, of itself, going to transform you."

- Richard Rohr.

“It’s hard to find people who write about God from a position of commitment but still sound as if they’re being human and honest, not running every word through the filter of religious subculture."

- John Ortberg. Forward of Blue  Like Jazz. 

Breathing Christian Sectarianism

"We didn't know that God was this accesable, did we? We didn't know that God was as available as the breath. And, to remind you, there's not a catholic and a protestant way of breathing. Did you know that?"

- Richard  Rohr

What Is THEOLOGY?

Sara Maitland has defined theology as … “(1) the art of telling stories about the divine and “(2) the art of listening to those stories.”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

"Why does this huge, sprawling, tactless book sit there inscrutably in the middle of our cultural heritage ... frustrating all efforts to walk around it?"

 - Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye. Northrop Frye, The Great Code (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), xviii–xix

What Has Lighting The World Cost You?

"As a child in the 1950s, I heard a story at a holiness revival meeting in New York. It seems a certain missionary, home on leave, was shopping for a globe of the world to take back to her mission station. The clerk showed her a reasonably priced globe and another one with a lightbulb inside. “This is nicer,” the clerk said, pointing to the illuminated globe, “but of course, a lighted world costs more.” What has lighting our world cost you lately?"

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

The Unasked Question

"I confess I am quite put out of countenance by the example of the slave of Pupius Piso the orator. He, not wishing to be annoyed by their prating, ordered his slaves merely to answer his questions, and not say a word more. On one occasion wishing to pay honour to Clodius who was then in power, he ordered him to be invited to his house, and provided for him no doubt a sumptuous entertainment. At the time fixed all the guests were present except Clodius, for whom they waited, and the host frequently sent the slave who used to invite guests to see if he was coming, but when evening came, and he was now quite despaired of, he said to his slave, "Did you not invite him?" "Certainly," said the slave. "Why then has he not come?" said the master. "Because he declined," said the slave. "Why then did you not tell me of it at once?" said the master. "Because you never asked me," said the slave."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher. 

Unity is Just A Christian Talking Point

"Scilurus, the king of the Scythians, left eighty sons, and on his death-bed asked for a bundle of sticks, and bade his sons break it when it was tied together, and when they could not, he took the sticks one by one and easily broke them all up: thus showing them that their harmony and concord would make them strong and hard to overthrow, while dissension would make them feeble and insecure."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher 

Few Words

"... so Laconian oratory has no rind...

for example, what the Lacedæmonians said to Philip, "[Remember] Dionysius at Corinth."  And again, when Philip wrote to them, "If I invade Laconia, I will drive you all out of house and home," they only wrote back, "If."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher

Excessive Fish and Women

I laughed out loud!

"....  as Demosthenes tells us; and that Philocrates got a large sum of money, and spent it on women and fish..."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher

Two Legs To Flee A Talker

"... according to the wise Aristotle himself. For he being bothered with a talkative fellow, and wearied out with his absurd tales, and his frequent question, "Is not this wonderful, Aristotle?" "Not at all," said he, "but it is wonderful that anyone with a pair of legs stops here to listen to you." And to another such fellow, who said after a long rigmarole, "Did I weary you, philosopher, by my chatter?" "Not you, by Zeus," said he, "for I paid no attention to you." For even if talkative people force you to listen, the mind can give them only its outward ears to deluge, while it unfolds and pursues some other thoughts within;..."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher 

Talkativeness

"Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear nobody, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen......

For their ears can certainly have no passages leading to the brain but only to the tongue. And so while other people retain what they hear, talkative people lose it altogether, and, being empty-headed, they resemble empty vessels, and go about making much noise.  If however it seems that no attempt at cure has been left untried, let us say to the talkative person, "Be silent, boy; silence has great advantages; For their ears can certainly have no passages leading to the brain but only to the tongue. And so while other people retain what they hear, talkative people lose it altogether, and, being empty-headed, they resemble empty vessels, and go about making much noise. If however it seems that no attempt at cure has been left untried, let us say to the talkative person, "Be silent, boy; silence has great advantages;" two of the first and foremost of which are hearing and being heard, neither of which can happen to talkative people, for however they desire either so unhappy are they that they must desist from it. For in all other diseases of the soul, as love of money, love of glory, or love of pleasure, people at any rate attain the desired object: but it is the cruel fate of talkative people to desire hearers but not to get them, for everyone flees from them with headlong speed; and if people are sitting or walking about in any public place,  and see one coming they quickly pass the word to one another to shift quarters."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher 

Flying Praise

"They say the gadfly attacks bulls, and the tick dogs, in the ear: so the flatterer besieges with praise the ears of those who are fond of praise, and sticks there and is hard to dislodge."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher 

A Tickling Freedom?

".... so these flatterers do not use a genuine or serviceable freedom of speech, but merely a winking and tickling innuendo."

- Plutarch. Morals 3157

Breezy Christianty

"My power is faint and low

Till I have learned to serve;

It wants the needed fire to glow,

It wants the breeze to serve...."

- George Matheson Hymn

Hysterical Christians

"There are Christians who have hysterical reactions, as if the world would have slipped out of God's hands.... But we believe in history; the world is not a roll of the dice going  toward chaos.....

Take away the sadness from our faces. We are not in a game of chance...."

- Father Luis Espinal. Assassinated March 22, 1980 in La Paz, Bolivia, by paramilitairy forces. One of his last writings.

A Church That Understands Culture

“...... "the destiny of the world” hinges on “the Church’s dialogue with the cultures of our time.....
A faith which does not become culture is a faith which has not been fully received, not thoroughly thought through, not fully lived out.”


- Polish Pope John Paul II on establishing the Pontifical Council for Culture in 1982

A Leader With A Compass & Magnet

Leader - "....a person with a magnet in his heart and a compass in his head” ?

- Howard Hendricks

Something The Bible Never Claims

"Theologian John Baillie once remarked, “The New Testament does not say, ‘You shall know the rules, and by them you shall be bound,’ but, ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch.  2.0