pre-text

2008-12-03T09:33:00.004-02:00

One difficulty with 'principles' is how useful they are in the face of complex moral dilemmas. They are helpful as far as they go, but are sometimes too abstract and general to help in sorting out complex moral questions....
We need not so much to establish a set of abstract principles as to cultivate the kind of character that will act wisely and justly in different situations -- a bit like developing the skill to hit a good tennis shot, whatever angle or speed the ball may be hit towards you....
Virtues are learnt in the same way in which we mostly learn to play football, dance, carve wood or cook --through example and imitation, not logic and principles. We watch those who are already good at these things, experience a desire to be like them, and so we start to copy them. A person of virtue does not have to think too hard about doing the right thing; he or she will do it naturally, without thinking....
The other key point...essential to the cultivation of virtue is the telling of stories.

Graham Tomlin. SPIRITUAL FITNESS: CHRISTIAN CHARACTER IN A CONSUMER CULTURE.

2008-12-01T09:55:00.002-02:00

The purpose of integrating contemplative presence in youth ministry is not to turn kids into monks, nor is it to make us experts in contemplative prayer; it is to deepen our awareness of God, others, and self so that we might become fully alive....

Engaging kids solely in contemplative exercises in unnatural, because contemplative prayer does not lead to more contemplative prayer--it leads to authentic action. Activities in the youth ministry are not longer chosen frantically from resource books; instead the youth ministry becomes more responsive to the needs of the youth and the movement of the Holy Spirit. We begin to hold our programs lightly....The ministry becomes something unique and natural to our community, rather than a cookie-cutter "franchise" ministry imported from a mega-church.

Mark Yaconelli. CONTEMPLATIVE YOUTH MINISTRY:PRACTICING THE PRESENCE OF JESUS.

2008-11-25T16:27:00.002-02:00

Dr. Stephanie: And what did you do today?

Leonard: I'm a physicist...so I thought.

Dr. Stephanie: That's all. You thought?

Leonard: (a bit defensively) Well, I wrote some of it down.

BIG BANG THEORY. Season 2, Episode 8.

2008-11-24T12:56:00.001-02:00

The system isn't something out there--you're the system. The system is what you enact.

Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, Flowers. PRESENCE: HUMAN PURPOSE AND THE FIELD OF THE FUTURE.

2008-11-01T22:01:00.001-02:00

Nothing has done greater damage to our Christian testimony that our trying to beright and demanding right of others. We become preocupied with what is and what is not right....but this is not our standard. The whole question for us is cross-bearing. You ask me, "Is it right for someone to strike my cheek?" I reply, "Of couse not! But the question is, do you only want to be right?".... Praise God that he makes his sun to shine on the evil and the good. With him it is a question of his grace and not of righ tor wrong. But that is to be our standard also.... We have nothing to stand for, nothing to ask or demand. We have only to give.

Watchman Nee. SIT, WALK, STAND.

2008-10-29T12:17:00.002-02:00

Human love produces human subjection, dependence, constraint; spiritual love creates freedom of the brethren under the Word. Human love breeds hothouse flowers; spiritual love creates the fruits that grow healthily in accord with God's good will in the rain and storm and sunshine of God's outdoors....
...life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society, a collegium pietatis, but rather where it understands itself as being a part of the one, holy cathloic, Christian Church, where it shares activly and passively in the sufferings and struggles and promise of the whole Church.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer. LIFE TOGETHER.

2008-10-29T12:05:00.002-02:00

Every cell contains identical DNA information for the larger organism, yet cells also diferentiate as they mature--into eye, or heart, or kidney cells. This happens because cells develop a kind of social identity according to their immediate context and what is needed for the health of the larger organism.... A cell that loses its social identity reverts to blind undifferentiated cell division, which can ultimately threaten the life of the larger organism. It is what we know as cancer.

Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, Flowers. PRESENCE: HUMAN PURPOSE AND THE FIELD OF THE FUTURE.

2008-10-29T09:17:00.001-02:00

I wish we didn't live in a world where buying and selling things (especially selling) seems to have become almost more important than either producing or using them.

C.S. Lewis. LETTERS TO AN AMERICAN LADY.

2008-10-26T22:16:00.000-02:00

For Christianity begins not with a big DO, but with a big DONE. Thus Ephesians opens with the statement that God has "blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ" (1:3) and we are invited at the very outset to sit down and enjoy what God has done for us; not to set out to try and attain it for ourselves....

What does it really mean to sit down? When we walk or stand we bear on our legs all the weight of our own body, but when we sit down our entire weight rests upon the chair or couch on which we sit...In walking and standing we expend a great deal of energy, but when we are seated we relax at once, because the strain no longer falls upon our muscles and nerves but upon something outside of ourselves. So also in the spiritual realm, to sit down is simply to rest our whole weight--our load, ourselves, our future, everything--upon the Lord.

Watchman Nee. SIT, WALK, STAND.

2008-10-24T12:37:00.003-02:00

As long as our thinking is governed by habit...we will continue to re-create institutions as they have been, despite their disharmony with the larger world...

Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, Flowers. PRESENCE: HUMAN PURPOSE AND THE FIELD OF THE FUTURE.

2008-10-20T20:26:00.003-02:00

Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us....The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer. LIFE TOGETHER.

2008-10-18T21:23:00.002-03:00

It's common to say that trees come from seeds. But how could a tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the resources needed to grow a tree. These must come from the medium or enviornment within which the tree grows. But the seed does provide something that is crucial: a place where the whole of the tree starts to form. As resources such as water and nutrients are drawn in, the seed organizes the process that generates growth. In a sense, the seed is a gateway through which the future possibility of the living tree emerges.

Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski & Flowers. PRESENCE: HUMAN PURPOSE AND THE FIELD OF THE FUTURE.

2008-09-20T08:45:00.007-03:00

Another thing we learn in solitude is to love the ways of God; we learn the cosmic patience of God. There's the passage in Isaiah in which God says, "Your ways are not my ways," and then goes on to describe how God's ways are like the rain that comes down and waters the earth. Rain comes down and just disappears, and then up comes the life. It's that type of patience.

Richard Foster. A LIFE FORMED IN THE SPIRIT. Interview on Christianity Today. Sept. 2008.

2008-09-12T11:47:00.002-03:00

Why I am content to be an "amateur" writer, photographer, teacher, youth worker, runner:

am·a·teur -

French, from Latin amtor, lover, from amre, to love.

A person who engages in an art, science, study, or athletic activity for love and passion.

2008-09-09T11:32:00.003-03:00

This version of Christianity is a facade [the "Sunday Christian" phenomenon], a method for practicioners to appear like fine, upstanding citizens without allowing the claims and teachings of Jesus to bite very hard into everyday life. With the death of Christendom, the game is up. There's less and less reason for upstanding citizens to join with the Christian community for the sake of respectability or acceptance... leaving only the faithful behind to rediscover the Christian experience as it was intended: a radical, subversive, compassionate community of followers of Jesus.

Michael Frost. EXILES: LIVING MISSIONALLY IN A POST-CHRISTIAN CULTURE.

2008-09-09T10:48:00.002-03:00

Aristotle observed that people are much more likely to respond to a message if, in addition to understanding it, they experience the emotion that energizes an appropriate response. Information and reasons alone are unlikely to trigger action.
....
Vincent Donovan, the modern Catholic apostle to the Masai people of East Africa, once observed that Protestant Christian leaders seem to trust only the sense of hearing, and therefore rely almost totally upon using the preached and taught Word to reach and teach people. By contrast, he said, Celtic Catholics believe that God can use all five senses to "speak" to people.

George G. Hunter III. THE CELTIC WAY OF EVANGELISM: HOW CHRISTIANITY CAN REACH THE WEST...AGAIN.

2008-08-21T23:51:00.003-03:00

For when allegory is at its best, it approaches myth, which must be grasped with the imagination not the intellect. If, as I still sometimes hope, my North and South and Mr. Sensible have some touch of mythical life, then no amount of 'explanation' will quite catch up with their meaning. It is the sort of thing you cannot learn from definition: you must rather get to know it as you get to know a smell or a taste, the 'atmosphere' of a family or a country town, or the personality of an individual.

C.S. Lewis. THE PILGRIM'S REGRESS. Preface.

2008-08-21T23:42:00.003-03:00

To live a remote, retired, secluded life is the antipodes of spirituality as Jesus Christ taught it.
The test of our spirituality comes when we come up against injustice and meanness and ingratitude and turmoil, all of which have the tendency to make us spiritual sluggards. We want to use prayer and Bible reading for the purpose of retirement. We utilize God for the sake of getting peace and joy, that is, we do not want to realize Jesus Christ, but only our enjoyment of Him. This is the first step in the wrong direction.

Oswald Chambers. MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST. July 10. The Spiritual Sluggard.

2008-08-21T09:12:00.002-03:00

With bitterness and true compunction of heart I acknowledge before Thee gross and selfish thoughts that I so often allow to enter my mind and to influence my deeds.
I confess, O God--
...that often I deceive myself as to where my plain duty lies:
that often, by concealing my real motives, I pretend to be better than I am:
...that often my affection for my friends is only a refined form of caring for myself:
that often my sparing of my enemy is due to nothing more than cowardice:
...O holy One, let the fire of Thy love enter my heart, and burn up all
this coil of meanness and hypocrisy, and make my heart as the heart of a little child.

John Baillie. A DIARY OF PRIVATE PRAYER. Seventeenth Day, Evening.

2008-08-16T12:53:00.001-03:00

Sometimes we don't know what God wants because there are stories yet to play out and people's lives still to be impacted by yours.

Jake Colsen. SO YOU DON'T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH ANY MORE.

2008-08-16T12:40:00.003-03:00

"All models are wrong, but some are useful." So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right. But what choice did we have? Only models, from cosmologial equations to theories of human behavior, seemed to be able to consistently, if imperfectly, explain the world around us. Until now.....
The new availability of huge amounts of data, along with the statistical tools to crunch these numbers, offers a whole new way of understanding the world. Correlation supercedes causation, and science can advance even without coherent models, unified theories, or really any mechanistic explanation at all.

Chris Anderson. THE END OF THEORY: THE DATA DELUGE MAKES THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD OBSOLETE. Wired. July 08.

2008-07-22T11:27:00.003-03:00

Seeing the church as a reality instead of an activity will allow you to celebrate the church however she expresses herself around you....
When you only see it one way, you miss so many other ways in which Father works. Instead of thinking about what kind of meeting or group we should have, ask what would help people best grow in his life.
The church thrives where people are focused on Jesus, not where they are focused on church.

Jake Colsen. SO YOU DON'T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH ANYMORE: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY INTO THE REALITY OF THE FATHER'S FAMILY.

2008-07-22T11:24:00.000-03:00

If I could offer only one piece of advice, it would be: "Listen to everyone, follow no one." Each runner is unique, so there's no one thing that will work for everyone.

Dean Karnazes. Runners World.

2008-06-26T23:35:00.001-03:00

Once in my twenties, I was listening to a mentor give an after-dinner talk on communication. As an aside he said, “And as we all know, insight is not transferable.” As we all know? I queried myself. The line never let go of me….
If we cannot pass wisdom around the table the way we do food, then why do I write another book, or teach? Even though insight is not directly transferable, the desire for it can be. It can be prompted by a deep love of the subject, the lure of the teller’s example, or a traumatic surprise in one’s life.

Kent Ira Groff. WHAT WOULD I BELIEVE IF I DIDN’T BELIEVE ANYTHING: A HANDBOOK FOR SPIRITUAL ORPHANS.

2008-06-26T23:31:00.001-03:00

In the modern era, people came to church and asked, “Who is God?” But today, if people come to church at all, they ask, “Who are God’s people? How does Christianity cash out in community and in practice?”

Leonard Sweet. OUT OF THE QUESTION…INTO THE MYSTERY.