tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48341480571492916542024-02-18T22:01:08.679-06:00Aramis of the 4 Mass'keteersA secular Franciscan & student of René Girard reflecting on how we desire according to the desire of the other.
"Most High, glorious God, cast Your Light into the darkness of my heart, and grant me a right faith, certain hope and perfect charity, sense and understanding, Lord, so that I may know and do Your holy and true command." - St. Francis of Assisi: Prayer before the CrucifixDavid Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.comBlogger185125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-10985033327196834452023-05-28T16:07:00.000-05:002023-05-28T16:07:25.391-05:00In The Year 2525 - 2 Remix versions from the year 2020<p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #263238; font-family: "Roboto Condensed", sans-serif; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 0px 0.5rem; outline: 0px !important;"><span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit; outline: 0px !important;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">2 Haunting Covers of 'In the Year 2525'</span></span></h2></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f0f0f; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f0f0f; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">First Remix: video featuring 'In The Year 2525'- Zager and Evans - Cover - Remix - Pete Stark</span> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05); color: #0f0f0f; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: start; white-space: pre-wrap;">"COVID19 has taken over the world in 2020. We are going through a massive lock-down. </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05); color: #0f0f0f; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: start; white-space: pre-wrap;">How is life after COVID-19? Is mankind still alive in the year 2525?"</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JNbUUSuiEho" width="320" youtube-src-id="JNbUUSuiEho"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f0f0f; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: start; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lyrics:
In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find...
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing to chew
Nobody's gonna look at you
In the year 5555
Your arms are hangin` limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine doing that for you
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube
In the year 7510
If God is coming he oughta` make it by then
Maybe he'll look around himself and say
``Guess it's time for the Judgement day''
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head
He'll either say ``I'm pleased where man has been''
Or tear it down and start again
In the year 9595
I'm kind of wondering if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing...
Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
But throught eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday...
In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f0f0f; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: start; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: start; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0f0f0f; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">https://www.youtube.com/@filmvizion/videos</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f0f0f; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: start; white-space: pre-wrap;">Second Remix: video featuring 'In The Year 2525'- Zager and Evans - Cover - Remix - Music House Groove Guild and production company Sarofsky</span></div><p></p><h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #263238; font-family: "Roboto Condensed", sans-serif; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 0px 0.5rem; outline: 0px !important; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F5r8iT1rszk" width="320" youtube-src-id="F5r8iT1rszk"></iframe></h2><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05); color: #0f0f0f; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: start; white-space: pre-wrap;">Master recording by Groove Guild
www.grooveguild.com
Social handles - @GrooveGuild
All visuals by Sarofsky
www.sarofsky.com
Social handles - Instagram - @Sarofsky_design, Facebook & Twitter - @Sarofsky
Smart link to steam audio: </span><span class="yt-core-attributed-string--link-inherit-color" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05); border: 0px; color: #065fd4; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a class="yt-core-attributed-string__link yt-core-attributed-string__link--display-type yt-core-attributed-string__link--call-to-action-color" force-new-state="true" href="https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqazBhcnlWMmxvbTJlb1hrbDJCMFJEY0VCb3FDQXxBQ3Jtc0ttaFNhMUliNEdGSHlWVkZpbC1VZEMxaXhsM0ljbXJpeXFUV1M2bWFlZEFiNm13NEtkNXZTeXV4WnNmZnlZTXl2YWlmVldoa3Fab3AwMjVsMjBoRnRhUFlRck1EM0l1aktST0ctNU9PeTYtSXNQeENHbw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fffm.to%2Fadqrqk9&v=F5r8iT1rszk" rel="nofollow" style="display: inline; text-decoration-line: none;" tabindex="0" target="_blank">https://ffm.to/adqrqk9</a></span><span style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05); color: #0f0f0f; font-family: Roboto, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: start; white-space: pre-wrap;">
Director statement:
The way that the old, folksy sound contrasts the dark, dystopian lyrics and how the mercurial descriptions are so susceptible to visual interpretation, forced us to contemplate the current state of the world. We were specifically drawn to how the verses related to scientific/technological advancements and worked to manifest them into a look that is undeniably retrofuturistic.
Songwriter credits:
Written by Richard Evans
Published by Zerlad Music Enterprises, Ltd. (BMI)
Worldwide rights administered by Grow Your Own Music (BMI), a division of “A” Side Music, LLC d/b/a Modern Works Music Publishing
Production credits:
Director: Erin Sarofsky
Co-Director: Duarte Elvas
Executive Producer: Steven Anderson
Producer: Kelsey Hynes
Lead Artists: Josh Smiertka, Jake Allen, Tanner Wickware, Matt Miltonberger
Additional Design and Animation: Ally Munro, Griffin Thompson, Andrew Hyden, Dan Moore, Tobi Mattner, Nik Braatz
Additional Contributors: Jamie Gray, Andrew Rosenstein, Mark Galazka, Kenny Albanese</span></p></blockquote>David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-43556660382714214512022-08-06T19:31:00.031-05:002023-06-28T14:55:51.843-05:00The Book of Eli<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><b> Scenes from The Book of Eli</b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XAJX9H1Gw8Q" width="320" youtube-src-id="XAJX9H1Gw8Q"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">How Can You Mend a Broken Heart - Al Green's version (1972)</span></b><div><br /></div><div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">I can think of younger days when living for my life</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Was everything a man could want to do</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">I could never see tomorrow, but I was never told about the sorrow</span></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">And how can you mend a broken heart?</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">How can you stop the rain from falling down?</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">How can you stop the sun from shining?</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">What makes the world go round?</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">How can you mend a this broken man?</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">How can a loser ever win?</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again</span></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 12px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">I can still feel the breeze that rustles through the trees</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And misty memories of days gone by</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">We could never see tomorrow, no one said a word about the sorrow</span></div><div class="ujudUb WRZytc" jsname="U8S5sf" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">And how can you mend a broken heart?</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">How can you stop the rain from falling down?</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">How can you stop the sun from shining?</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">What makes the world go round?</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">How can you mend this broken man?</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">How can a loser ever win?</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again</span></div><p><br /></p><div><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">We had no idea what was precious </span></b></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ukiZwQMGLm0" width="320" youtube-src-id="ukiZwQMGLm0"></iframe></div></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #030303; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Solara: "Do you remember what it was like? I mean, in the world before?</span></span></div><div><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Eli: "People had more than they needed. We had no idea what was precious and what wasn't. We threw away things people kill each other for now."</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #030303; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #030303; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #030303; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Walk by faith</b></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #030303; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #030303; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F6L7BxVE0ys" width="320" youtube-src-id="F6L7BxVE0ys"></iframe></div><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #030303; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #f9f9f9;"><b>It's a flower of light in a field of darkness,
and it's given me the strength to carry on.</b></span></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #030303; font-size: large; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8uVsMxfN7QQ" width="320" youtube-src-id="8uVsMxfN7QQ"></iframe></div><br /><span><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #1a1818; font-family: Minion Pro SmBd, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span><span><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #1a1818; font-family: Minion Pro SmBd, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">Solara: "</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">Didn't</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;"> </span><a href="https://www.definitions.net/definition/think" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-size: 15px; text-decoration-line: none;">think</a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">anything </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">could make you </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;">give up that book."</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eli: "</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">You know, for years </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">I've been</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><a href="https://www.definitions.net/definition/carrying" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; text-decoration-line: none;">carrying</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">and </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">reading it</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><a href="https://www.definitions.net/definition/every" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; text-decoration-line: none;">every</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">day. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">I got so</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><a href="https://www.definitions.net/definition/caught" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; text-decoration-line: none;">caught</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">up </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">with</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><a href="https://www.definitions.net/definition/keeping" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; text-decoration-line: none;">keeping</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">it safe </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">I</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><a href="https://www.definitions.net/definition/forgot" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; text-decoration-line: none;">forgot</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">to live by </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">what I learned</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">from it."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">Solara: "</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">Yeah? What's that?"</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eli: "</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">Just to...</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">Do for</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><a href="https://www.definitions.net/definition/others" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px; text-decoration-line: none;">others</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">more than </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">you do for yourself. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">It's what I got </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;">from it anyway."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></div><div><span><span><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #1a1818; font-family: Minion Pro SmBd, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">From Magnificat - Aug 7, 2022</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span><span><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #1a1818; font-family: Minion Pro SmBd, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Putting our faith in God can seem like walking blindly into the dark simply because God has asked us to—with no assurance that we have heard correctly or that God is there to catch us if we fall. </span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span><span><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #1a1818; font-family: Minion Pro SmBd, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span><span><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #1a1818; font-family: Minion Pro SmBd, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Yet that is what Eli did. Let us pray for the gift of that same unshakable faith.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #030303; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Ending prayer</b></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #030303; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NQXIF7qvd2I" width="320" youtube-src-id="NQXIF7qvd2I"></iframe></div></span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dear Lord, thank you for giving the strength and conviction to complete the task you entrusted to me.</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #030303; font-size: medium; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thanks you for guiding me straight and true through the many obstacles in my path.</span></div></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">And for keeping me resolute when all around me seemed lost.</span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thank you for your protection and many signs along the way.</span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thank you for any good I may have done. I am so sorry about the bad.</span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thank you for the friend I made. Please watch over her as you watched over me.</span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thank you for finally allowing me to rest. I am so very tired but I go now to my rest and peace.</span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Knowing that I have done right with my time on this earth.</span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></span><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" face="Roboto, Arial, sans-serif" style="background: rgb(249, 249, 249); border: 0px; color: #030303; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7-8)</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span></div><div><br /></div></div>David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-87739798405989737952022-06-10T22:37:00.004-05:002022-06-10T22:52:23.459-05:00An Ultimate Tribute <p></p><h2 style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">... a stairway to heaven</span></b></span></h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2cZ_EFAmj08" width="320" youtube-src-id="2cZ_EFAmj08"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><span face="karla, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-size: 18px;">One sign of a classic song is its power to drive us to meaning and <i>Stairway to Heaven</i> is just such a song. </span></div><div><span face="karla, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></div><div><span face="karla, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-size: 18px;"><a href="https://auralcrave.com/en/2018/07/15/stairway-to-heaven-why-led-zeppelins-masterpiece-is-actually-a-personal-growth-lesson/" target="_blank">The True Meaning of Led Zeppelin's <i>Stairway to Heaven</i></a></span></div><div><span face="karla, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></div><div><span face="karla, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-size: 18px;">"Here it is, therefore; our stairway to heaven: our goal in life, according to Led Zeppelin, must be to discover the power of the community, the need to live together, in harmony with our souls and with nature. Only in this way can we we really improve ourselves and others, escaping the real evil of society, framed in its materialism, selfishness and disinterest towards others (</span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #303030; font-family: karla, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">“When all are one and one is all / To be a rock and not to roll”</em><span face="karla, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-size: 18px;">).</span></div><div><span face="karla, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></div><div><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #303030; font-family: karla, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Stairway to Heaven</em><span face="karla, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-size: 18px;">, in conclusion, is everything but a perverse ode to evil and darkness. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, a splendid message of solidarity, brotherhood and equality. Together, we can really change the world around us. </span><em style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #303030; font-family: karla, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">To be a rock and not to roll</em><span face="karla, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-size: 18px;">. Maybe it’s just an illusion. Perhaps we will never be able to really get together and do something concrete to make our lives better. But the message is there, and that’s what Led Zeppelin wanted from us."</span></div><br /> .<span face=""Google Sans", Roboto-medium, arial, sans-serif-medium, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 28px; white-space: nowrap;">Stairway to Heaven</span><p></p><div class="xaAUmb" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 16px 0px;"><div jsname="WbKHeb"><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="margin-bottom: 12px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And she's buying a stairway to heaven</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">With a word she can get what she came for</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Ooh, ooh, and she's buying a stairway to heaven</span></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="margin-bottom: 12px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">There's a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">You know</span></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="margin-bottom: 12px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">There's a feeling I get when I look to the west</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And my spirit is crying for leaving</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And the voices of those who stand looking</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">That's you</span></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="margin-bottom: 12px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">And it's whispered that soon, if we all call the tune</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Then the piper will lead us to reason</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And a new day will dawn for those who stand long</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And the forests will echo with laughter</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Remember laughter?</span></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="margin-bottom: 12px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">Oh yeah, yeah, yeah...</span></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="margin-bottom: 12px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">And it makes me wonder</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">It's just a spring clean for the May queen</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">There's still time to change the road you're on</span></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="margin-bottom: 12px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">The piper's calling you to join him</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?</span></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="margin-bottom: 12px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">And as we wind on down the road</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Our shadows taller than our soul</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">There walks a lady we all know</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Who shines white light and wants to show</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">How everything still turns to gold</span></div><div class="ujudUb" jsname="U8S5sf" style="margin-bottom: 12px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">And if you listen very hard</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">The tune will come to you at last</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">When all is one and one is all, that's what it is</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">To be a rock and not to roll, oh yeah</span></div><div class="ujudUb WRZytc" jsname="U8S5sf" style="margin-bottom: 0px;"><span jsname="YS01Ge">And she's buying a stairway to heaven</span></div></div></div><div class="f41I7 ai4HXb j04ED" style="background-color: white; color: #70757a; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; margin: 16px 0px;">Songwriters: Robert Plant / James Patrick Page</div>David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-70317985594870363862021-01-20T12:07:00.002-06:002021-01-20T12:18:14.712-06:00God provides opportunities...<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzHQVVZ3TFtDGPgxNNn7vZn5C429oxpItio6ZNjLLkOf25_6Z15whXjfIqTyomcJjvjeWOHpjdWTBpM6GyELA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>
<blockquote>"Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?" - "God"</blockquote>David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-33014800765604104612020-06-12T07:35:00.000-05:002020-06-12T07:35:34.685-05:00The Real Presence Requires the Sacrament and the Church<h1 style="background: rgb(247, 247, 247); color: #660803; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 26px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 5px; text-transform: uppercase;">
ENCOUNTERING CHRIST IN THE EUCHARIST</h1>
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<a href="https://www.cssprogram.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Pope-Benedict.jpg" style="color: #400a08; text-decoration-line: none;"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2787" height="191" src="https://www.cssprogram.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Pope-Benedict.jpg" style="border: none; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; padding: 3px;" title="Pope Benedict" width="128" /></a>We need the living Christ, whom we can know only through our encounter with him. But encounter presumes actual presence—the Real Presence, which, in turn, requires the Sacrament and the Church that alone is authorized to give us the Sacrament, the Church that Christ himself willed into existence and continues to support. The Eucharist, at each new celebration, must be recognized anew as the core of our Christian life. But we cannot celebrate the Eucharist adequately if we are content to reduce it to a ritual of—more or less—a half-hour’s duration. To receive Christ means to worship him. We welcome him properly and worthily at the solemn moment of receiving him only when we worship him and in worshiping him learn to know him, come to understand his nature, and follow him. We need to learn once more how to rest peacefully in his gentle presence in our churches, where the Eucharist is likewise always present because Christ intercedes for us before the Father, because he always awaits us and speaks to us. We must learn again how to draw inwardly close to him, for it is only thus that we become worthy of the Eucharist. We cannot prepare ourselves to receive the Eucharist simply by thinking about how it should be done. We can prepare for it only when we try to comprehend the depths of its demands on us, of its greatness; when we do not reduce it to our level, but let ourselves be raised to its exalted level; when we become aware of the accumulated sound of the prayers offered during all the centuries in which generations of men have advanced and are still advancing toward Christ. It is petty and undiscerning to criticize such prayers because we do not understand them; it is an expression of a genuinely “critical” sentiment (of which, be it noted, self-criticism is also a form) when we begin to recognize their greatness and, opening ourselves to that greatness, let ourselves be deepened and purified by it.</div>
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From: Joseph Ratzinger, Roman homilies, October 12, 1982</div>
David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-28172282373003187972018-02-04T12:06:00.004-06:002018-02-04T12:06:53.719-06:00Amen <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-4185875708278264942017-01-19T18:51:00.000-06:002017-01-19T18:51:04.158-06:00<h1 style="background-color: #fafafa; font-family: avenir; font-size: 28px; font-weight: 500; letter-spacing: -1px; line-height: 28px; margin: 20px 0px 5px;">
<a href="https://www.trinitywallstreet.org/video/beyond-us-and-them-practice-faith-post-election-america">Beyond Us and Them: The Practice of Faith in a Post-Election America</a></h1>
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Where do we find ourselves now? How do the insights of René Girard concerning desire, violence, and scapegoating help us to make sense of a moment where our illusions are being laid bare and how we are to be is suddenly put into question? Are we stuck in rivalry with easily identifiable “others” whose faults we see, while blind to our own?</div>
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All are invited. </div>
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<strong>James Alison</strong> is a Catholic priest, theologian, and author, known for his application of the thought of René Girard to contemporary theological questions.</div>
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<strong>Duncan Morrow</strong> has worked for many years in conflict resolution and peace-making in Northern Ireland and beyond. He is currently the Director of Community Engagement at the University of Ulster.</div>
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David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-37906474056888886812015-09-05T10:42:00.002-05:002015-09-05T10:42:28.112-05:00Non Violent by Jerry Naba Sonji Nkwe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Music influenced by Rene Girard, Introducing the Non Retributive,the non-violent God and the gospel of peace and grace.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lyrics-by Jerry Naba Sonji Nkwe</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #9197a3; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> · </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the gospel of peace</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">introcucing the non-violent God</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">introducing the non-retributive God</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">grace</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">allow me let me get in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no Armageddon</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">gospel of peace, see we going in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wars exist</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we say let fire cease</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">i mean ceasefire</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">your god of fire</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">violent God no more</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus ain't lord of war</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he is prince of peace</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he is waters still</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">greener pastures</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the love of our sons and daughters</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the hope of the whole world</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">why are you telling our boys and girls</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">God will take most to the abyss</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">down to the grave down to Hades</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">burn most and fail to save most</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that spells no peace</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and it’s not my king</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">chorus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sample speech by rene girard</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">verse 2</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">religion says we cursed dudes</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lemme say this on verse two</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">if it be that true</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">God is just like Zeus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and that God makes me puke</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">created for fire and destruction</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">perpetual suffering i call that ISIS</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">my lord is totally different</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">loving us all all about us</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">when religion doubt us</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">God believes in us</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and he lives in us</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we exist through him</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all we do in him</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">works for all us mankind</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he loved us proven by the cross</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">inclusive love, the treasure he sought for</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">humanity his heart beat</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what kind of love is this</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so great and strong taking all of us in</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no outcasts nor orphans of God</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the god of peace he is not god of war</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" /></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he is non violent</span></div>
David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-19432974124250910622015-08-31T16:24:00.000-05:002015-08-31T16:24:00.921-05:00Fr Chase Hilgenbrinck - For what are you willing to give all of yourself?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Interstate, 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Sans', Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 19.6000003814697px;">Link<span style="font-size: 14px;"> </span><a href="https://soundcloud.com/pastoralquotient/eucharistic-jesus-alleman-highs-one-thing" target="_blank"><b><span style="font-size: large;">HERE</span></b></a><span style="font-size: 14px;"> </span>to hear Fr Chase Hilgenbrinck's homily for the opening Mass at Alleman High School, 8-16-15</span></div>
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Gospel<a href="http://www.usccb.org/bible/john/6:51" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-width: 0px; color: #008061; float: right; font-stretch: normal; letter-spacing: 1.2px; margin: 1px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 1px 0px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase;"> JN 6:51-58</a></h4>
Jesus said to the crowds:<br />“I am the living bread that came down from heaven;<br />whoever eats this bread will live forever;<br />and the bread that I will give<br />is my flesh for the life of the world.”<br /><br />The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,<br />“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”<br />Jesus said to them,<br />“Amen, amen, I say to you,<br />unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,<br />you do not have life within you.<br />Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood<br />has eternal life,<br />and I will raise him on the last day.<br />For my flesh is true food,<br />and my blood is true drink.<br />Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood<br />remains in me and I in him.<br />Just as the living Father sent me<br />and I have life because of the Father,<br />so also the one who feeds on me<br />will have life because of me.<br />This is the bread that came down from heaven.<br />Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,<br />whoever eats this bread will live forever.”</div>
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David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-35734659444644484072015-05-13T21:15:00.000-05:002015-05-13T21:15:19.991-05:00After You Believe - NT Wright<div class="separator tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Listen to NT Wright talk of virtue and Christian character development.</span></div>
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<span class="a-size-large" id="productTitle" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.3 !important; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/After-You-Believe-Christian-Character/dp/0061730548" target="_blank">After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters by NT Wright</a></span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2010/01/05/the-rebirth-of-virtue-an-interview-with-n-t-wright/" target="_blank">In an interview NT Wright</a> talks of character as a result of habit-forming training:</span><br />
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... we modern westerners – and even more postmodern westerners – are trained by the media and public discourse to think that “letting it all out” and “doing what comes naturally” are the criteria for how to behave. There is a sense in which they are – but <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">only</em> when the character has been trained so that “what comes naturally” is the result of that habit-forming training.</blockquote>
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The book’s main target is not the other major moral theories of deontology and consequentialism, but the ideas of “spontaneity” and “authenticity” which have a grain of truth (Christians really should act “from the heart”), but which screen out the reality of moral formation, of chosen and worked-at habit-forming prayer and moral reflection and action, which gradually over time form the Christian character in which “authentic” behavior is also truly Christian behavior, not simply “me living out my prejudices and random desires”.</blockquote>
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The point about “virtue”, then, is that it flags up something which is central in the New Testament but marginal in much western Christian reflection, namely the fact that<ol style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; direction: ltr; font-family: proxima-nova, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px; list-style-position: outside; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em 35px; padding: 0px;">
<li style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Behaviour is habit-forming,</li>
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<li style="box-sizing: border-box; direction: ltr; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Christian behavior is supposed to be habit-forming and hence character-forming,...</li>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">... like learning a new language </span><br />
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When you learn a language, your brain literally changes: new connections are made, new possibilities emerge, new habits of mind, tongue, and even sometimes body language emerge and are formed. The result is not, though, that you can speak it for the fun of it, but that you can communicate with people in that language, and perhaps even be able to go and live in the country where that language is spoken, and feel at home there.</blockquote>
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This illustration helps to explain one part at least of the well known problem about how “what we do here and now” is umbilically connected to “who we will be in God’s new world”.</blockquote>
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The point is that in the new heavens and new earth there is an entire way of life awaiting us, and we have the chance to learn, here and now, the character-skills we shall need for that new way of life – particularly the great three which Paul says will “abide” into God’s future, namely faith, hope and especially love. (All this depends of course on the Spirit, and on the transformative renewal of the mind which Paul speaks about in <a class="rtBibleRef" data-purpose="bible-reference" data-reference="Romans 12.1-2" data-version="esv" href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Romans%2012.1-2" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #78b147; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Romans 12:1-2</a>.)</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">NT Wright expounds on the merits of virtue and becoming fully human:</span><br />
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... two other things to be said.</blockquote>
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First, the point about “vice”, the opposite of “virtue”, is that, whereas virtue requires moral effort, all that has to happen for vice to take hold is for people to coast along in neutral: moral laziness leads directly to moral deformation (hence the insidious power of TV which constantly encourages effortless going-with-the-flow). The thing about virtue is that it requires Thought and Effort . . .</blockquote>
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Second, the point about Christian virtue is that it claims, all the way back to the Adam-and-Abraham nexus in Genesis 12 and elsewhere and on to 1 Corinthians 15 and Revelation 21-22, that to become part of God’s people is to become a genuinely human being. So many Christians suppose that “normal humanness” is one thing and that “Christian living” is a rather odd and perhaps distorted form of being human, whereas part of the point of being Christian is to be genuinely human.</blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He concludes:</span><br />
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I come back to the point: for many in the West, all that matters is “doing what comes naturally”. That is an attempt to acquire instantly, without thought or effort, what Christian virtue offers as the fruit of the thought-out, Spirit-led, moral effort of putting to death one kind of behavior and painstakingly learning a different one. When the Spirit is at work, we become more human, not less – which means we have to think more, not less, have to make more moral effort, not less – and there has been a collusion between certain types of Christian teaching and certain types of post-Enlightenment moral teaching as a result of which many Christians are simply unaware of this challenge.<br />I hope the book will alert a new generation to the exciting and bracing prospect of a fully human and fully Christian life ‘after you believe’…</blockquote>
See the full interview<a href="http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2010/01/05/the-rebirth-of-virtue-an-interview-with-n-t-wright/" target="_blank"> <b><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;">HERE</span></b></a>.David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-22899701755666157002014-08-09T14:52:00.000-05:002014-08-09T15:32:03.655-05:00Knowing Jesus (excerpt by James Alison)<center>
Excerpt from <i><a href="http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/eng/books/knowing-jesus.html" target="_blank">Knowing Jesus</a></i>, regarding "justification by faith," by James Alison (Springfield, IL: Templegate Publishers, 1993), pages 80-84, 89-93.</center>
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<a href="https://www.templegate.com/catalog/images/knowingjesus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://www.templegate.com/catalog/images/knowingjesus.jpg" /></a>There is one further dimension to the presence of the crucified and risen Jesus I would like to bring out, and that is a dimension which cannot be separated from the dimension with which we have just been dealing. At the same time as the crucified and risen Lord is the foundation of the new Israel, so it is his crucified and risen presence that is the basis of the holiness of this new people. What is traditionally called 'justification by faith,' is inseparable from the universality of the new community, or society, that the victim founds. There is no grace, no faith, that is not by that very fact immediately related to the new reconciled community. The new Israel is not tacked on to the making of humans holy, as an additional extra. Making us holy is identical with making us part of the new Israel of God.<br />
Let me try and develop that. You will remember that what has been key throughout this book has been the intelligence of the victim [link to webpage on Alison's use of this phrase "<a href="http://girardianlectionary.net/res/intelligence_of_the_victim.htm" target="_blank">the intelligence of the victim</a>"]. I have emphasized repeatedly that this involves a prior self-giving out of freedom. So, the whole process of Jesus' life was not simply the story of a lynching, but the story of a man who acted in freedom in certain ways which he knew would lead to his being killed. He did not want to be executed, but he knew he would be. He didn't allow that fact to change the way he acted or taught. And in fact what he taught was the same: he taught people how to act freely, how not to have their lives run by being locked, in an unhealthy or resentful way, into the life of someone else, or the life of the group that formed them. The symbol of this freedom is the ability to turn the other cheek, to go the second mile, and so on.<br />
The importance of all that was the recognition that behind all of Jesus' life was a free self-giving, that was in no sense masochistic, in no sense contained by the violence of human relationships. Rather it was their antidote. It was this which, you remember, John saw as being the Father's giving of the Son, and the Son's obedience to the Father. That is, the free self-giving of Jesus, prior to any of the violence he underwent, was the divine hallmark of his mission. It was this element of self-giving that was totally gratuitous, not part of any human tit-for-tat or relationship of reciprocity, that was the witness to Jesus' being God.<br />
Now, Jesus illustrated the depths of that free self-giving in his last supper. It was in the last supper that he gave a mimed definition of himself as the self-giving victim ('This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many'). That is how Jesus was present among his disciples. It was that presence that was made alive again at the resurrection, when the crucified and risen Lord was the making alive of the self-giving victim as forgiveness for all victimizers. This means that when people talk about justification by grace through faith, the grace that is in question <i>is</i> the gratuity of the self-giving victim. There is no other grace. It is precisely that element of self-giving which was present in Jesus' life, up to and including his death -- <i>that</i> is what is present to us as grace.<br />
Now this has consequences! It means that holiness is our dependence on the forgiveness of the victim. That is to say, our being holy is dependent on the resurrection of the forgiving victim. And this, as we have seen, is exactly the same as the foundation of the new Israel, the beginnings of the new unity of humanity. The gratuity of the justification by grace through faith, and the gratuity which is the foundation of the new Israel is exactly the same gratuity. This means that justification by grace through faith automatically implies a relationship to the new Israel.<br />
Let me try to say the same thing in a slightly different way, since this is a difficult concept to grasp for those of us brought up in an individualist society, and accustomed to an individualist account of holiness, or justification, or faith, or all three. The new unity of humanity, begun in the new Israel, has only this as its basis: that the resurrection has turned our victim into our forgiveness. Such as receive the forgiveness begin to form a new unity without any victims.<br />
This means that what is given in Christ's victim death is a subversion of the old human way of belonging, and the possibility of our induction into a new human way of belonging, of being-with, without any over-against. This means that justification by faith belongs, in the first place, to the new community, the group receiving as a given its unity from the forgiving victim. It is exactly this making present of the beginnings of a new reconciled humanity which is the making present of justification by faith in the world.<br />
There is, therefore, no such thing as individual justification by faith. Such a justification would imply a rescue of an individual from an impious world, over against which the individual is now 'good' or 'saved.' However, while the individual is still locked into some or other form of over-against, they are not yet receiving the purely gratuitous victim who has nullified all over-against. All justification by faith (that is, all faith) is a relational reality, flowing from, and tending towards the purely given unity of humanity in the victim. There is no grace that is not universal, that is not constantly creating and recreating the purely given unity of all humanity from the body of the victim.<br />
Salvation, therefore, as it became present to the disciples at the resurrection, involved from the beginning a recasting of their way of relating to others, such that they were able to receive the purely given, without any appropriation to themselves of what was given as if it were somehow 'theirs.' We have already seen how Jesus' teaching was understood by the disciples in exactly this way. Part of the effect of the intelligence of the victim on their lives was their understanding Jesus' teaching on the importance, for instance, of forgiving so that we can be forgiven. It is the change in our relation with the other which permits and is permitted by the change in relation of God, the transcendent other, towards us. We are asked literally to loose, so that we may be loosed, to set free so that we may be set free -- that is what the Greek word <i>aphiemi, </i>usually translated 'to forgive,' means. Only in this way can our relationality be set free from the defensive self, which moves out of<i>ressentiment, </i>and enabled to become an interchange of gratuity.<br />
I have already indicated how in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' teaching is about how freedom involves not being moved by any over-against, not being creatures of reaction. It is about our movement out of reaction, and into the receiving of the given that is simultaneously our movement into the purely given unity of humanity. The teaching is about how to relate to the social other as a gift, rather than a burden which defines and limits us. That which makes this movement possible is the forgiving victim, mediated to us in the transformation of human relationality. I ask you to think how different this sounds from the fairly standard view that lurks beneath not a few people's attitudes, an attitude which goes something like this:<br />
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In the Old Testament, religion was a collective thing, and as such, needed Law, and rites, and all that. However, Jesus came along, and preached a religion of grace, and the conversion of hearts, and this is an individual thing, not a collective one. So Christianity is essentially the religion of the free individual. If we were going to be radical, we'd have to get rid of rites, and any notion of church membership as anything other than voluntary association. However, for convenience sake we keep a lot of funny old rites, and ecclesiastical oddities, just so long as we remember that these are superfluous to what Christianity is really about.</blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white;">I bring this up because it is by now, I hope, apparent that there is no change of heart that is not simultaneously a change in a way of belonging to a social other. And that of course means that there is no knowing Jesus outside the change of relationships that is the new Israel of God.</span><br />
Now all this is an essential part of the package of the presence of the crucified and risen Jesus, which is what I'm trying to set out before exploring in detail ways in which we, at this distance, might genuinely know Jesus, the crucified and risen one. If it sounds complicated, it is in part because it is complicated. It is difficult for us to understand that the foundation of the new Israel is the same as the basis for all holiness, all justification, all conversion. We find it difficult to understand that justification by grace through faith is necessarily a collective phenomenon. It is collective because the only sort of salvation we have been given is the beginnings of the unity of the whole of humanity in a new society founded on the forgiveness of the risen victim. Grace is automatically collective: there is no grace that does not tend towards the construction of this new Israel of God. There is no faith in Jesus that is not intrinsically related to his founding and edifying this new humanity, and there is no making righteous that does not involve a movement away from a certain sort of social 'belonging,' kept safe by casting out victims, and a simultaneous movement towards the fraternal construction of the people of the victim present in all the world....<br />
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We ended with the presence of the universal victim as the foundation for a new unity of humanity. I think therefore that one of the first questions we can ask ourselves about whether or not we know Jesus is: to what extent are we caught up in a sectarian frame of mind? To what extent are our responses tribal? Let me suggest ways in which we might be: whenever we behave as though some group to which we belong is self-evidently superior to, more truth-bearing than, some other group. That is to say, whenever there is a note of comparison in our reactions and behavior. The comparison can be to our favor, as when we consider ourselves superior, or to our detriment, as when we take on the role of the oppressed victim of society, or whatever. Both of these comparative forms of behavior betray that we have not found the givenness of the self-giving victim as the foundation of our unity.<br />
So, for instance, Catholics may easily talk of Protestants, or Muslims, as though the Catholic Church were superior to these other groups. Thus, belonging to the Catholic Church makes of one a superior sort of person: after all one knows the truths of the faith, and belongs to the true Church. This attitude is not uncommon, and it gives a sort of feeling of combative brotherhood with other fellow Catholics, a strengthened sense of belonging as one faces up to a world run by a hideous army of Protestants, pagans, Masons and what-have-you. In some countries the word 'Jew' would traditionally be part of this list of others. Well, I hope that gives it away. The unity that is created in this way -- even the laughing emotional bonding that seems to have no practical consequences, is created at the expense of a victim or victims, at the expense of an exclusion. That is to say, it is a unity that is derived over-against some other. And that is to betray the very deepest truth of the Catholic faith, the universal faith, which by its very nature, has no over-against. The unity which is given by and in the risen victim is purely given. It is indicative of no superiority at all over anyone else. Anyone who genuinely knows the crucified and risen victim can never again belong wholeheartedly to any other social, or cultural, or religious group. He or she will always belong critically to all other groups, because all other groups derive their unity over-against someone or some other group.<br />
The only unity to which he or she cannot escape belonging is the new unity of humanity that the Holy Spirit creates out of the risen victim, the unity which subverts all other unities. And this new unity, given us in the Catholic Church is not yet a realized unity, as must be apparent. The Church does not teach that it is the kingdom of heaven, which is the realization of the unity in the new Israel, but that it is the universal sacrament of that kingdom. That is to say that it is the efficacious sign of a reality that has been realized only in embryo. As such, it is radically subversive of all other forms of belonging, all other ways of constructing unity. But it is so as a gift from God.<br />
So, knowing Jesus implies, of necessity, a gradual setting free from any tribal sense of belonging, and the difficult passage into a sense of belonging that is purely given. Its only security is the gratuity of the giver, and that means a belonging in a group that has no 'abiding city,' that unlike the fox, has no hole, and unlike the bird, has no nest. You can see, I think, why it is particularly sad when Catholics turn belonging to the Church into a sectarian belonging, into a definable cultural group with a clearly marked inside and outside, and firm ideas as to who belongs outside. Of such people it can be said that they do not go in to the kingdom of heaven, and throw away the key so that others may not enter. By their very sectarian insistence on the unique truth of Catholicism, these people cut themselves off from access to the truth which they think is theirs, but which is only true when it is received as given.<br />
The flip side of this sign of knowing or not knowing Jesus is the adoption of the role of victim, one of the key moves in modern society if you want to establish your credentials, and make space so as to be tolerated. I imagine that almost all of us at one time or other have felt the pull of this cultural imperative: if we can cast ourselves as victims, then this makes us pure and innocent. Society is the villain. This is a tactic for any number of so-called 'minority' groups in society, and for any number of individuals in their relationships. It is a way, too, of covering up my violence, or the violence of the minority group, by blaming the (usually nebulous) other for all my ills. It can thus be a potent form of emotional blackmail, as well as making it very difficult to distinguish cases where people really are being persecuted, and something must be done about it, from cases where people are using their sacred status as victims to get away with what no other person or group would be able to. I am sure that all of you can think of examples of this mechanism in operation from your own history.<br />
Now, again, the knowledge of Jesus, the crucified and risen victim makes a difference here. For if you know the crucified and risen victim, you know that you are not yourself the victim. The danger is much more that you are either actively, or by omission, or both, a victimizer. We have only one self-giving victim, whose self-giving was quite outside any contamination of human violence or exploitation. The rest of us are all involved with that violence. The person who thinks of himself or herself as the victim is quick to divide the world into 'we' and 'they.' In the knowledge of the risen victim there is only a 'we,' because we no longer need to define ourselves over against anyone at all.<br />
So, knowing the universal victim involves a conversion in these very deep areas of our belonging and our way of relating. Any talk of knowing Jesus that permits the sectarian attitude, the 'we' / 'they,' might well give cause for suspicion. You can see once again how the theme of the universality of the victim, and hence of the Church, and the theme of justification by faith, are the same theme in the light of this. For the whole point of justification by faith is that it is the justification by God, not self justification. The whole problem Luther had with works was that he took the Catholic insistence on good works to be necessarily a source of self justification. Self-justification is of course when I justify myself over and against someone, or something else. I am trapped in a defensive, or self-justifying position if I constantly depend on comparison with, or approval from, others. That means that my sense of identity, my security is built over-against others, and is not simply, gratuitously given. I am dependent on various ways of showing that I am different, separate, not part of the crude mass of humanity. Self justification and the sectarian attitude are exactly the same phenomenon. The given-ness of goodness by God (implying the growing appreciation of my similarity to, and my lovability as one of, the crude mass of humanity which is loved by God) and the givenness of justification (and the givenness of the universality, the catholicity, of salvation) are one and the same phenomenon. In this way the individual and the group simultaneously learn to live without any over-against, defining themselves against no one at all. That is a sure sign of a real knowledge of Jesus.David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-20682116321259954622014-06-06T15:56:00.002-05:002014-06-06T15:57:37.612-05:00Montezuma Castle National Monument<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijqJPq2YE-5NaiegOM5wOS0-_FNEwP99dHlV39qHQMqabT98NmCGcly3YN56rxY2qGXE7IYlUpncdIK1BIgIOr2tCH94cEHze3p3sg-ESu5uHFbIsffDlGGH8RSsSPr1Se4nyFhN09lc4/s1600/Montezuma+Castle+Sedona,+AZ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijqJPq2YE-5NaiegOM5wOS0-_FNEwP99dHlV39qHQMqabT98NmCGcly3YN56rxY2qGXE7IYlUpncdIK1BIgIOr2tCH94cEHze3p3sg-ESu5uHFbIsffDlGGH8RSsSPr1Se4nyFhN09lc4/s1600/Montezuma+Castle+Sedona,+AZ.jpg" height="280" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #210063; font-family: Arial;"><span class="text"><span class="bluetext"><strong>Montezuma Castle</strong> is one of a number of well-preserved ancient dwellings in north central Arizona. An imposing 20 room, 5-story structure built into a recess in a white limestone cliff about 70 feet above the ground,</span></span> a multi-family <em>“prehistoric high rise apartment complex</em><span class="text"><span class="bluetext">." When first discovered the ruins were thought to be Aztec in origin, hence the name bestowed on them by early explorers, but they are now known to belong to the Sinagua Indian people who farmed the surrounding land between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, before abandoning the area.</span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #210063; font-family: Arial;"><span class="text">Since 1951, visitors have not been permitted to climb up to the ruins due to their unstable condition. The Visitor Center gives the history of the site and it's people including artifacts that were discovered. </span><span lang="EN-US">Amazingly, the interior of the castle remains almost completely intact, including many of the original ceiling support beams even though they were installed more than 800 years ago. </span></span></div>
David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-91671765064079186212014-06-06T15:40:00.000-05:002014-06-06T15:58:16.526-05:00Chapel of the Holy Cross, a small church set within the rock mesas.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmxBh-Z4nFaYzWMHDnU5AWw74uZp0odQsignQ8kxIjqkGps8nkp-FEjmKQkLSk0yGKUdOxsEfS0LGAPc-BsxqEbKlR-l_Jf6D-TJlFBVg9HmG9rzXrZAnpjx496RZvKgggirl6isaWFW8/s1600/Sedona-Chapel+of+Holy+Cross.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmxBh-Z4nFaYzWMHDnU5AWw74uZp0odQsignQ8kxIjqkGps8nkp-FEjmKQkLSk0yGKUdOxsEfS0LGAPc-BsxqEbKlR-l_Jf6D-TJlFBVg9HmG9rzXrZAnpjx496RZvKgggirl6isaWFW8/s1600/Sedona-Chapel+of+Holy+Cross.jpg" height="320" width="223" /></a></div>
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My Mom & Dad loved to take trips in the great southwest. Just outside of Sedona, AZ is the Chapel of the Holy Cross. <span style="font-family: Arial;">Designed by Marguerite Brunswig Staude, a pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright, the Chapel appears to rise out of the surrounding red rocks. The towering cross and awesome panorama of buttes, valley and sky are a source of inspiration inviting rest and reflection</span></div>
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Built in the 1950s, the chapel’s front façade is comprised of windows and a cross that juts from a 1,000-foot high rock wall and rises 90 feet into the air. It’s easy to access on Chapel Road. The church is modest, which seems fitting for its special spot set in the rocks, and offers seemingly endless views of the area. </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;"><a href="http://www.chapeloftheholycross.com/store/ContactUs.asp#.U5Im_nJdWSo" target="_blank"><i><b>Chapel of the Holy Cross belongs to the parish of St. John Vianney in Sedona and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix.</b></i></a> Visitors are invited to attend a brief evening prayer service on Monday evenings at 5pm.</span></div>
David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-60320106006200469372013-07-23T10:42:00.002-05:002013-07-23T10:42:44.159-05:00Prepare the Inflammable Substance
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<a href="http://www.turnbacktogod.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Holy-Spirit-Dove-Fire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="http://www.turnbacktogod.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Holy-Spirit-Dove-Fire.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">God alone can teach us to love God. All we can do is prepare
the inflammable substance as best we can and, as the physicists say nowadays,
wait for the chain reaction. All we can do, within the limitations of our
miserable egotism, is listen for and help along that feeble cry which struggles
to say, Father! Abba! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The conversion of the mind is difficult enough, but how much
more so the conversion of the heart! For the love of God is total, embracing
all things, and jealous; it is at once personal and transcendent. It beckons us
to that path which leads to His heart of hearts, for God is love. He is not too
weary after all the miracles, nor all the miseries in which we founder, nor all
the extremities through which our fortunes lead us, to reveal Himself to us as
our one hope of salvation. - Paul Claudel, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Believe-God-Meditation-Apostles-Creed/dp/0898708567" target="_blank"><strong><em><span style="color: red;">I Believe in God</span></em></strong></a> (appearing in <a href="https://www.magnificat.net/english/index.asp" target="_blank"><em><span style="color: #741b47;">The Magnificat</span></em></a>)</span></div>
David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-52605850819102542382013-06-22T16:03:00.000-05:002013-06-22T20:37:26.054-05:00The journey stretches out with a beat of a heart - The mystery we call Labyrinth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Inneres_der_Kathedrale.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Inneres_der_Kathedrale.jpg" width="414" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartres_Cathedral" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-size: 11px; line-height: 15.828125px; text-align: left;">Chartres Cathedral</span></span><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 15.828125px; text-align: left;">, about 1750, Jean Baptiste Rigaud</span></a></td></tr>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-01d4d297-6d3c-1f92-e020-6925671eb11d"></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A wonderful poem by William Stafford, from Smokes’ Way (1983) puts into words the experience of walking a labyrinth.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When God watches you walk, you are/ </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">neither straight nor crooked. The journey stretches out, and all of its reasons/ beat like a heart. Coming back, no triumph, no regret, you fold into the curves,/ </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">left, right, and arrive. You touch the door. The road straightens behind you./ </span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-01d4d297-6d3c-a087-1117-bf95414b8864"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is now. It has all come true.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px; white-space: normal;">Gil Bailie elaborates further on the poem: "Our lives meander all over taking different turns, running into dead ends and reverses and suddenly, with God’s grace we arrive at where we are going. We touch the door and the path straightens out behind us. I have a friend who says that if I met myself back when I was 20, he would not recognize me, but I would recognize him. Well, the door for us is the Cross and the scriptures straighten behind us. When we touch that, then we go back and read it again. We read it for the second time and we say: Christ is the answer and the Cross is the cure. Now we can see what is happening in this story." </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px; white-space: normal;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px; white-space: normal;">And now, as Simone Weil reveals, we take our place at the mouth of the labyrinth:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px; white-space: normal;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; white-space: normal;">"The beauty of the world is at the mouth of the labyrinth. The unwary individual who on entering takes a few steps is soon unable to find the opening. Worn out, with nothing to eat or drink, in the dark, separated from his dear ones, and from everything he loves and is accustomed to, he walks on without knowing anything or hoping anything, incapable even of discovering whether he is really going forward or merely turning round on the same spot. But this affliction is as nothing compared with the danger threatening him. For if he does not lose courage, if he goes on walking, it is absolutely certain that he will finally arrive at the center of the labyrinth. And there God is waiting to eat him. Later he will go out again, but he will be changed, he will have become different, after being eaten and digested by God. Afterward he will stay near the entrance so that he can gently push all those who come near into the opening" (1951, Waiting for God, pp. 163-164).</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; white-space: normal;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdekSzzJEhlruZmevM6VYvO4gg4M-VVrohskY7nmylzfUAvZ_QxGamgXveqOMbZF6xk1JBMvdY6KsJYDtuH3S_yRY67NVugQHs-0IrciCMkbxV7DOsbuhLLdp8YIIvhjRL6ZtqXzycoKA/s1600/Shalem+labyrinth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdekSzzJEhlruZmevM6VYvO4gg4M-VVrohskY7nmylzfUAvZ_QxGamgXveqOMbZF6xk1JBMvdY6KsJYDtuH3S_yRY67NVugQHs-0IrciCMkbxV7DOsbuhLLdp8YIIvhjRL6ZtqXzycoKA/s400/Shalem+labyrinth.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #4b4b4b; font-family: arial, 'sans serif'; line-height: 20.796875px; text-align: start;">The eleven circuit <a href="http://rccbonsecours.com/home.html" target="_blank">Bon Secours Labyrinth</a> is the focal point of a one-acre sacred space surrounded by tall shade trees, plants, flowers and meditation benches.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">My first experience with a labyrinth was here at the Bon Secours Center during a Shalem Institute "Soul of the Executive" program in October 2000. During the first residency, a 6 day retreat, I walked the labyrinth 4 times, each time coming away a bit disoriented as my memories were being stirred and quieted at the same time. Each leaving of the center of the labyrinth I sensed a fear, as in a loss of balance with an unsettling peace, not one I had been accustom. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Over time and with spiritual direction I came to realize that this dis-ease was "me" being displaced at the center of the universe - of the labyrinth if you will. A major part of this disorientation was that my memories were being transformed, so as they were no longer "my" memories but Christ's in which I shared. I admit that It seems all so scary as I came to understand what St Paul proclaimed, "It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).</span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> The re-visualizing of my memories is nothing short of this "I" that clung to a false security formed by this world - putting "me" at the center, to the constitution of a new "I" in Christ, now alive through His life, death and resurrection at the center.</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">So as Simone Weil describes, I too, after exiting the labyrinth, found myself near its entrance ready to nudge the next passerby into the mystery.</span></span></div>
David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-31057874373540223082013-06-02T14:58:00.000-05:002013-06-02T15:01:27.886-05:00If freedom for all is universal then responsibility for all is universal.<h1 style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19.5px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Excerpt from</span></span><span style="font-size: medium; font-weight: bolder;"> The Brothers Karamazov </span><span style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium; font-weight: normal;">by Fyodor Dostoevsky</span></h1>
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The words of the deceased Priest and Monk, the Elder Zossima</h3>
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<a href="http://ryanphunter.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/st-ambrose-of-optina-1.jpg?w=584" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="309" src="http://ryanphunter.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/st-ambrose-of-optina-1.jpg?w=584" width="320" /></a>"Mother darling,"
he would say, "there must be servants and masters, but if so I will be the
servant of my servants, the same as they are to me. And another thing, mother,
every one of us has sinned against all men, and I more than any."<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mother positively smiled at
that, smiled through her tears. "Why, how could you have sinned against
all men, more than all? Robbers and murderers have done that, but what sin have
you committed yet, that you hold yourself more guilty than all?"<o:p></o:p></div>
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"Mother, little heart of
mine," he said (he had begun using such strange caressing words at that
time), "little heart of mine, my joy, believe me, everyone is really
responsible to all men for all men and for everything. I don't know how to
explain it to you, but I feel it is so, painfully even. And how is it we went
on then living, getting angry and not knowing?"<span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-69754630266954759742013-06-01T14:42:00.003-05:002013-06-01T14:43:42.824-05:00Standing near the entrance of the labyrinth - Simone Weil<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: purple; font-size: large;"><b>Simone Weil </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The
beauty of the world is at the mouth of the labyrinth. The unwary individual who
on entering takes a few steps is soon unable to find the opening. Worn out,
with nothing to eat or drink, in the dark, separated from his dear ones, and
from everything he loves and is accustomed to, he walks on without knowing
anything or hoping anything, incapable even of discovering whether he is really
going forward or merely turning round on the same spot. But this affliction is
as nothing compared with the danger threatening him. For if he does not lose
courage, if he goes on walking, it is absolutely certain that he will finally
arrive at the center of the labyrinth. And there God is waiting to eat him.
Later he will go out again, but he will be changed, he will have become
different, after being eaten and digested by God. Afterward he will stay near
the entrance so that he can gently push all those who come near into the
opening.</span></blockquote>
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(1951, Waiting for God, pp. 163-164).</div>
David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-36139815280163868642013-05-24T15:29:00.002-05:002013-05-24T15:30:55.324-05:00Great video "I am struggling with confession"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/fjly6X9a41E?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">From <a href="http://rcspiritualdirection.com/blog/" target="_blank">Roman Catholic Spiritual Direction blog</a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><a href="http://rcspiritualdirection.com/blog/" target="_blank"> </a>Fr. John and Dan Burke talk about common struggles with confession and how we can better understand and enter into the grace of this sacrament.</span>David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-42219940853488295622013-05-11T16:55:00.001-05:002019-04-21T15:14:07.152-05:00This is Water - A Look into Our 'Default Setting'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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DAVID FOSTER WALLACE</h1>
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<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words" target="_blank">This is the commencement address he gave to the graduates of Kenyon College in 2005. It captures his electric mind, and also his humility--the way he elevated and made meaningful, beautiful, many of the lonely thoughts that rattle around in our heads. The way he put better thoughts in our heads, too. (Many thanks to <span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit;">Marginalia.org</span></span> for making this available.)</a></em></div>
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(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"</div>
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This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.</div>
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Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about "teaching you how to think". If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your scepticism about the value of the totally obvious.</div>
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Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."</div>
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It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.</div>
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The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.</div>
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Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.</div>
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Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF8jvur1ZfUBt34a8zRagzi0-5MFVXYNyHQGiQBcSjvUy2rLI5SKnmo8n5vjisnV94x9JkWlh043mdOf6TYL3uCdQ662KMi6vYd1poKKENvhNLdJgAbdbbSSRsRMZh8ZDxZldnp0qWRAA/s1600/DAvid+Foster+Wallace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="215" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF8jvur1ZfUBt34a8zRagzi0-5MFVXYNyHQGiQBcSjvUy2rLI5SKnmo8n5vjisnV94x9JkWlh043mdOf6TYL3uCdQ662KMi6vYd1poKKENvhNLdJgAbdbbSSRsRMZh8ZDxZldnp0qWRAA/s320/DAvid+Foster+Wallace.jpg" width="202" /></a>Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education--least in my own case--is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualise stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.</div>
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As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotised by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about "the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master".</div>
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This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.</div>
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And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.</div>
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By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.</div>
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But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.</div>
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Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.</div>
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But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.</div>
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Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.</div>
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You get the idea.</div>
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If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.</div>
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The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit8MRbdx9tapLy6qDwScKXqUbLMaq4_OROs-L-CtfEmBKCijpwKRB-4pZM01JKoBN4wtvplRQFS-H2HS3yASyo2SjgUYcCS_GkM3R-cvWC7aW77lgkN6m1lQfAOSzpGla0YwDN9i5rUt8/s1600/David+Foster+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="230" data-original-width="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit8MRbdx9tapLy6qDwScKXqUbLMaq4_OROs-L-CtfEmBKCijpwKRB-4pZM01JKoBN4wtvplRQFS-H2HS3yASyo2SjgUYcCS_GkM3R-cvWC7aW77lgkN6m1lQfAOSzpGla0YwDN9i5rUt8/s1600/David+Foster+.jpg" /></a>Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.</div>
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Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.</div>
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But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.</div>
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Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.</div>
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This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.</div>
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Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.</div>
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Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.</div>
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They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.</div>
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And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.</div>
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That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.</div>
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I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.</div>
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The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.</div>
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It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:</div>
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"This is water."</div>
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"This is water."</div>
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It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.</div>
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I wish you way more than luck.</div>
David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-25606552154989564612013-05-02T17:07:00.002-05:002013-05-02T17:16:28.913-05:00St Athanasius - Feast day is May 2<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Saint Athanasius</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><b>His epitaph is Athanasius contra mundum, “Athanasius against the world.” We are proud that our own country has more than once stood against the world. Athanasius did the same. He stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, “whole and undefiled,” when it looked as if all the civilised world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius—into one of those “sensible” synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today and which, then as now, included among their devotees many highly cultivated clergymen. It is his glory that he did not move with the times; it is his reward that he now remains when those times, as all times do, have moved away. </b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">-</span><b style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"> CS Lewis</b><br />
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<i style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Saint Athanasius of Alexandria</span></b></i></div>
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<i><b>From Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience</b></i></div>
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<i>Dear Brothers and Sisters,</i></div>
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Continuing our re-visitation of the great Teachers of the ancient Church, let us focus our attention today on St Athanasius of Alexandria.</div>
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Only a few years after his death, this authentic protagonist of the Christian tradition was already hailed as "the pillar of the Church" by Gregory of Nazianzus, the great theologian and Bishop of Constantinople (<i>Orationes, </i>21, 26), and he has always been considered a model of orthodoxy in both East and West.</div>
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Athanasius was undoubtedly one of the most important and revered early Church Fathers... (f)or Athanasius was also the most important and tenacious adversary of the Arian heresy, which at that time threatened faith in Christ, reduced to a creature "halfway" between God and man, according to a recurring tendency in history which we also see manifested today in various forms.</div>
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In all likelihood Athanasius was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in about the year 300 A.D. He received a good education before becoming a deacon and secretary to the Bishop of Alexandria, the great Egyptian metropolis. As a close collaborator of his Bishop, the young cleric took part with him in the Council of Nicaea, the first Ecumenical Council, convoked by the Emperor Constantine in May 325 A.D. to ensure Church unity. The Nicene Fathers were thus able to address various issues and primarily the serious problem that had arisen a few years earlier from the preaching of the Alexandrian priest, Arius.</div>
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With his theory, Arius threatened authentic faith in Christ, declaring that the <i>Logos </i>was not a true God but a created God, a creature "halfway" between God and man who hence remained for ever inaccessible to us. The Bishops gathered in Nicaea responded by developing and establishing the "Symbol of faith" ["Creed"] which, completed later at the First Council of Constantinople, has endured in the traditions of various Christian denominations and in the liturgy as the <i>Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.</i></div>
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<b><i>In this fundamental text - which expresses the faith of the undivided Church and which we also recite today, every Sunday, in the Eucharistic celebration - the Greek term homooúsios</i>is featured, in Latin <i>consubstantialis: </i>it means that the Son, the <i>Logos, </i>is "of the same substance" as the Father, he is God of God, he is his substance. Thus, the full divinity of the Son, which was denied by the Arians, was brought into the limelight.</b></div>
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In 328 A.D., when Bishop Alexander died, Athanasius succeeded him as Bishop of Alexandria. He showed straightaway that he was determined to reject any compromise with regard to the Arian theories condemned by the Council of Nicaea...</div>
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Despite the unequivocal outcome of the Council, which clearly affirmed that the Son is of the same substance as the Father, these erroneous ideas shortly thereafter once again began to prevail - in this situation even Arius was rehabilitated -, and they were upheld for political reasons by the Emperor Constantine himself and then by his son Constantius II.</div>
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Moreover, <b>Constantine was not so much concerned with theological truth but rather with the unity of the Empire and its political problems; he wished to politicize the faith, making it more accessible - in his opinion - to all his subjects throughout the Empire.</b></div>
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Thus, the Arian crisis, believed to have been resolved at Nicaea, persisted for decades with complicated events and painful divisions in the Church. At least five times - during the 30 years between 336 and 366 A.D. - Athanasius was obliged to abandon his city, spending 17 years in exile and suffering for the faith. But during his forced absences from Alexandria, the Bishop was able to sustain and to spread in the West, first at Trier and then in Rome, the Nicene faith as well as the ideals of monasticism, embraced in Egypt by the great hermit, Anthony, with a choice of life to which Athanasius was always close.</div>
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St Anthony, with his spiritual strength, was the most important champion of St Athanasius' faith. Reinstated in his See once and for all, the Bishop of Alexandria was able to devote himself to religious pacification and the reorganization of the Christian communities. He died on 2 May 373, the day when we celebrate his liturgical Memorial.</div>
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The most famous doctrinal work of the holy Alexandrian Bishop is his treatise: <i>De Incarnatione, On the Incarnation of the Word, </i>the divine <i>Logos </i>who was made flesh, becoming like one of us for our salvation.</div>
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In this work Athanasius says with an affirmation that has rightly become famous that the Word of God "was made man so that we might be made God; and he manifested himself through a body so that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and he endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality" (54, 3). With his Resurrection, in fact, the Lord banished death from us like "straw from the fire" (8, 4).</div>
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<b>The fundamental idea of Athanasius' entire theological battle was precisely that God is accessible. He is not a secondary God, he is the true God and it is through our communion with Christ that we can truly be united to God. He has really become "God-with-us"...</b></div>
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Lastly, Athanasius also wrote meditational texts on the Psalms, subsequently circulated widely, and in particular, a work that constitutes the <i>bestseller </i>of early Christian literature<i>: The Life of Anthony, </i>that is, the biography of St Anthony Abbot. It was written shortly after this Saint's death precisely while the exiled Bishop of Alexandria was staying with monks in the Egyptian desert. </div>
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Athanasius was such a close friend of the great hermit that he received one of the two sheepskins which Anthony left as his legacy, together with the mantle that the Bishop of Alexandria himself had given to him.</div>
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The exemplary biography of this figure dear to Christian tradition soon became very popular, almost immediately translated into Latin, in two editions, and then into various Oriental languages; it made an important contribution to the spread of monasticism in the East and in the West...</div>
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Moreover, Athanasius himself showed he was clearly aware of the influence that Anthony's fine example could have on Christian people. Indeed, he wrote at the end of this work: </div>
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"The fact that his fame has been blazoned everywhere, that all regard him with wonder, and that those who have never seen him long for him, is clear proof of his virtue and God's love of his soul. For not from writings, nor from worldly wisdom, nor through any art, was Anthony renowned, but solely from his piety towards God. That this was the gift of God no one will deny.</div>
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"For from whence into Spain and into Gaul, how into Rome and Africa, was the man heard of who dwelt hidden in a mountain, unless it was God who makes his own known everywhere, who also promised this to Anthony at the beginning? For even if they work secretly, even if they wish to remain in obscurity, yet the Lord shows them as lamps to lighten all, that those who hear may thus know that the precepts of God are able to make men prosper and thus be zealous in the path of virtue" (<i>Life of Anthony, </i>93, 5-6).</div>
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Yes, brothers and sisters! We have many causes for which to be grateful to St Athanasius. His life, like that of Anthony and of countless other saints, shows us that "those who draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly close to them" (<i>Deus Caritas Est, </i>n. 42).</div>
David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-5651127314724665362013-04-26T16:42:00.001-05:002013-04-27T21:00:53.391-05:00Allowing Grace to Perfect Nature - Spiritual Direction<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">The ever popular notion that one discovers their true identity in and/or by Nature tantamount to navigating a very slippery slope. Maybe the best way to come at this is to simply say that in Nature there is an instinctual level of communication yet the reality of human existence does not take form until something else takes place; meaning and our ability to symbolize our experiences rather than simply respond to it.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://www.usccb.org/bible/john/1" target="_blank">The Word and thus, naming reveals the mystery of reality.</a> Mystery in this sense is not so much as unknown but unfathomable, something like love, there is so much more to be appreciated. So something other than communication happens here and language is our way of bringing meaning to our existence. Stumbling blocks akin to slippery slopes are often examples of our fallen relationship with another, a teacher or model where, by a knee jerk tendency in naming something, we explain it away rather than to find a way to rest in the tension of the mystery of naming something so to grant access to its wonder bringing us into a deeper relationship. </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Therefore the idea or image that some have that Nature is a mother to us just does not work - a sister, yes, but not a mother. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">G.K. Chesterton observed:</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/gk-chesterton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/gk-chesterton.jpg" width="253" /></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><i><span style="color: purple;"><b>The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshipers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved. - </b></span></i></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080245657X?ie=UTF8&tag=caffeithough-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=080245657X" style="line-height: 18px; outline: none; text-align: justify;"><em>Orthodoxy</em></a><span style="line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">, pg. 168-169</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">In the wisdom of St Thomas Aquinas: </span><i><span style="color: #660000;"><b>"Since grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it, natural reason must be subject to faith, just as the natural tendency of the will is guided by charity."</b></span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is so important when we discern certain orientations as they brush up against matters of faith and of being human. Again it is necessary to rest in the mystery of naming something to find how Grace is working in our nature. </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pope Benedict XVI wrote in </span><a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Caritas in Veritate</a><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“One aspect of the contemporary technological mindset is the tendency to consider the problems and emotions </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of the interior life from a purely psychological point of view, ...</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In this way man’s interiority </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">is emptied of its meaning and gradually our awareness of the human </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">soul’s ontological depths, as probed by the saints, is lost. The question </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of development is closely bound up with our understanding of the human soul,<b style="font-style: italic;"> </b></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">insofar as we often reduce the self to the psyche and confuse the </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">soul’s health with emotional well-being. These over-simplifications </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">stem from a profound failure to understand the spiritual life, and they </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">obscure the fact that the development of individuals and peoples depends partly on the resolution of problems of a spiritual nature.”</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.spiritdaily.com/bookpi16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="http://www.spiritdaily.com/bookpi16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="http://www.spiritdaily.com/bookpi16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.spiritdaily.com/bookpi16.jpg" width="196" /></a><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To contemplate on this spiritual nature that Benedict refers to we must accept the challenge to heighten our religious sensibilities. This doesn't necessarily mean a more complex study like I love to meander through, but one can take a page out of </span><span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Story-Soul-Autobiography-Therese-Lisieux/dp/1453603956/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367014999&sr=1-6" target="_blank"><b>The Story of a Soul</b></a> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">from the mystical heart of St. Thérèse's Little Way,</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> where she explains that Jesus does not demand great actions from us but simply <b><i>surrender and gratitude,</i></b> the keys to human freedom.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> Contrary to </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">any notion (or rather myth) of freedom in Nature, where in reality we are reduced to reciprocal-response creatures, </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">St. Thérèse's</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Little Way illuminates a relational model of being where we are predisposed for the other and God. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Here, freedom in Christ, a <b><i>surrender and gratitude</i></b> brings an openness and willingness to journey with God exploring the numerous and varied voices operating on us </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and to reach <b>beyond</b> those 'other' voices to discover the portal that leads to Christ, who is our fulfillment. With our Baptism in the Holy Spirit we find our being in Christ so to relax into (graciously surrendering the controls to God) into an imitation of Him whose self-donating nature allows us to reach out to our sisters and brothers in a state of meaning, purpose and solidarity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Without God, the Transcendent Other however, and to the degree we reject or even neglect God, we are swayed toward an atheism of indifference and relativism, oblivious to God and are at risk of becoming oblivious to the values sustaining life. Caught in something resembling a soap opera or grade-B movie, our life without the breaking-in of <b>something-larger-than-we-are</b> is emptied of any inner peace and our relationships become frail and often filled with resentment. Our soul becomes parched and very quickly, emptied of our sense of worthiness - our lives becoming mere shadows of a self not able to substantiate between a real or a virtual existence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nature is perfected in Grace, so too the human nature must be perfected through on-going spiritual formation. This unfathomable mystery of formation is actually found in its simple signposts directing us toward becoming fully human. The signposts of spiritual formation are: induction, habits, and time. So breaking free from the soap opera life of a tit-for-tat existence we are led by others into something over time. Hence, Grace perfecting nature.</span><br />
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<a href="http://unsteadysaint.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/spiritual-formation-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="157" src="http://unsteadysaint.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/spiritual-formation-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Formation needs to be nourished by a diet of study and piety that fuses into apostolic action. Like most diets spiritual formation is a struggle where temptations that are distracting and demeaning blind us from our goal. So it is important to remember our need to go <b>beyond</b> reason to where we surrender to faith that sustain us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fidelity, fidelity, fidelity is the key to spiritual formation. A great source to help stay true to God's </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">meaning and presence in one's journey is a spiritual director. They can help one stay focused in Christ always mindful that the journey is relational. The service of spiritual direction fosters a spaciousness, a width and breath in order to build up our nature in the communion of Christ.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Allowing Grace to perfect nature. </span>David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-29931914843907775992013-04-13T18:50:00.002-05:002013-04-14T15:02:15.105-05:00Self-respect is a gift received<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
A spin on St Francis' make me a channel of your peace - make me an invitation of giving</div>
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William Hurlbut writes of St Francis in his article <i><u><b><a href="http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/st-francis-christian-love-and-the-biotechnological-future" target="_blank">St. Francis, Christian Love, and the Biotechnological Future</a></b></u></i> :<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">For Francis there was never any </span><span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', arial, verdana, sans-serif;"><b>"escape from the desperations of natural life, but in a transformation in his spiritual understanding of the interwoven meaning of suffering and love. He came to see that the whole of creation, and each of its varied creatures in their distinct strengths and struggles, reflected and revealed the perfection of the Creator. If all things are from one Father, then all are kin and worthy of solicitude and appreciation. It was not nature in the abstract that he loved but every differentiated being in its particularity and individuality. Likewise, he loved not humanity in the abstract so much as individual human beings. He described this love as </b></span></span><span style="color: #4c1130;"><b><i style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', arial, verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">courtesy</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', arial, verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 22px;">, a tender affection and concern for others as precious and unique, as creatures beloved of God; and his courtesy was born not of magnanimity or largesse (with their implicit sense of superiority) but of genuine humility of heart. He became the “little brother” (the Order of Friars Minor is the official name of his followers), placing himself in a position of neediness before others. Not so much a giver of gifts as a “giver of giving,” Francis provided the invitation to give by putting himself in circumstances that drew forth the generosity of others — and with it, their self-respect."</span></b></span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Here is a concept we should spend our entire life working toward: <i><b>A "giver of giving" - being an invitation to give by drawing forth the generosity of others - and with it their self-respect. So "self-respect" is not something we muster up from within our selves through autonomous self-will or individualism... self-respect is rather a gift received. Imagine that.</b></i></span>David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-24735739189200878222013-04-07T15:32:00.002-05:002013-04-07T15:42:40.422-05:00Art of Praying<b><span style="font-size: large;">from<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/511406.Art_of_Praying" target="_blank"> <i>The Art of Praying</i></a></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Fr. Romano Guardini </span></b><br />
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<a href="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355093421l/511406.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355093421l/511406.jpg" width="212" /></a>The basic meaning of the word <i>recollected</i> is "to be unified, gathered together." A glance at our life will show how much we lack this aptitude. We should have a fixed center which, like the hub of a wheel, governs our movements and from which all our actions go out and to which they return; a standard also, or a code by which we distinguish the important from the unimportant, the end from the means, and which puts actions and experience into their proper order; something stable, unaffected by change and yet capable of development, which makes it clear to us who we are and how matters stand with us. We lack this; we, the men of today lack it more than did those who lived in earlier ages. </blockquote>
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This becomes evident in our attempts to pray. Spiritual teachers speak of <i>distraction</i>s that state in which man lacks poise and unity, that state in which thoughts flit from object to object, in which feelings are vague and unfocused and the will ineffective. Man in this state is not really a person who speaks or who can be spoken to, but merely an uncoordinated bundle of thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Recollectedness means that he who prays gathers himself together, directs his attention to what he is doing, draws in all thought--a painstaking task--so as to dedicate himself to prayer as a unified whole. This is the state in which he may, when the call comes to him, answer in the words of Moses, "Here I am."</blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The distractions in prayer come from the disjointedness of life. Some may claim that there seem to be more distractions today because there is a greater amount of information flowing in constantly. We cannot be focused on any issue for more than a few minutes at a time IF we allow ourselves to react to all of that information. And who can argue this claim. However the symptom of this carving-to-overdose on any and everything is our sense of emptiness - a lack of ontological density. From my mentor Gil Bailie:</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://3massketeers.blogspot.com/2007/07/6-degrees-to-waning-of-ontological.html" target="_blank"><i><span style="color: #20124d;">Lack of ontological density means a self that is insubstantial and it is seeking in self-defeating ways some way of substantiating itself. There are 2 ways of substantiating the self: 1) that way that perfectly parallels the cultural system that generates false transcendence; and 2) the experience of true transcendence. </span></i></a></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">However one understands the breakdown in the sense of being centered, of having a focus for one's life, the remedy abides somewhere in the <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+11%3A29-32%2CMatthew+16%3A4&version=NASB" target="_blank">mystery knowing that there is something greater here</a> - in the very mystery of faith. Faith is a gathering up of all the me's into something larger than a self.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; text-align: justify;">“Faith is the finding of a ‘You’ that upholds me and, amid all the unfulfilled…hope of human encounters, gives me the promise of an indestructible love that not only longs for eternity but also guarantees it. Christian faith lives on the discovery that not only is there such a thing as objective meaning but that this meaning knows me and loves me, that I can entrust myself to it like [a] child.” Pope Benedict XVI</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To truly practice the <i>Art of Praying</i> in today's fast-paced, distracted and scandalized culture we may want to allow less of the world to intrude into our thoughts and instead hone in on and become participants in all things of beauty, truth and goodness. </span>David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-10357121360705841072013-04-06T18:08:00.004-05:002013-04-07T14:21:46.919-05:00Getting to the Truth - beyond the corpses - learning to read scandal<span style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This short scene in the movie, LINCOLN is a glimpse into scandal. A new book on scandal, </span><a href="http://msupress.msu.edu/bookTemplate.php?bookID=4359" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15.555556297302246px; font-weight: bold;">Beneath the Veil of the Strange Verses </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">Reading Scandalous Texts by</i><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12px;"> </i></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #006600; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://msupress.msu.edu/bookTemplate.php?bookID=4359" target="_blank">Jeremiah L. Alberg</a> </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">defines scandal:</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> "as those events, scenes, and representations to which we are attracted at the same moment that we are repelled. The scandalous is that which excites without satisfying, seduces without delivering, and promises without fulfilling. In one word it summarizes René Girard's analysis of mimetic desire as the doomed-to-be-frustrated reaching for the skanalon, the object of scandal."</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (<a href="http://girardianlectionary.net/res/iss_1-scandal.htm#N_1_" target="_blank">Link here to an excerpt from</a></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: -webkit-center;"><a href="http://girardianlectionary.net/res/iss_1-scandal.htm#N_1_" target="_blank"> René Girard's </a></span><i style="font-size: large; text-align: -webkit-center;"><a href="http://girardianlectionary.net/res/iss_1-scandal.htm#N_1_" target="_blank">I See Satan Fall Like Lightning</a>.</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #006600; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Alberg notes that we are confronted with a stark choice: </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"<span style="background-color: white;">either turn away from scandal completely or become enthralled and thus trapped by it." </span></span><br />
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When watching the movie I thought this scene cuts to the truth of scandal and thus do we turn away from the corpses or get enthralled and trapped in the tragic. Or, as Alberg says, do we allow scandal to open us up to journey beyond the tragic and death to a deeper truth?<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic;">[Lincoln rides slowly on the frontline outside of Petersburg, Virginia, saddened by the sight of all the dead and wounded soldiers; later he meets Grant at his headquarters in in Petersburg; they sit outside on the porch]</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Abraham Lincoln: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once he surrenders, send his boys back to their homes, their farms, their shops.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Ulysses S. Grant: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes sir, as we discussed.</span><br />
<a href="http://www.moviequotesandmore.com/image-files/lincoln-14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Lincoln Quotes" border="0" hspace="7" src="http://www.moviequotesandmore.com/image-files/lincoln-14.jpg" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); float: right; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; height: 183px; width: 300px;" /></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Abraham Lincoln: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Liberality all around, not punishment, I don't want that. And the leaders, Jeff and the rest of 'em, if they escape, leave the country while my back's turned, that wouldn't upset me none. When peace comes it mustn't just be hangings.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Ulysses S. Grant: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By outward appearance, you're ten years older than you were a year ago.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic;">[Lincoln, looking very tired, nods his head]</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Abraham Lincoln: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some weariness has bit at my bones.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic;">[he pauses for a moment, thinking]</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Abraham Lincoln: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I never seen the like of it before. What I seen today. Never seen the like of it before.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Ulysses S. Grant: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You always knew that, what this was going to be. Intimate, and ugly. You must've needed to see it close when you decided to come down here.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic;">[Lincoln stands, puts his hat on and shakes Grant's hand]</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Abraham Lincoln:</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We've made it possible for one another to do terrible things.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Ulysses S. Grant:</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We have won the war. Now you have to lead us out of it.</span>David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4834148057149291654.post-45823452098479694232013-04-06T15:17:00.000-05:002013-04-06T15:58:08.299-05:00The Opportunity of the Day (if not a lifetime) - Interpreting Wrath & Love in a Way that Opens Our Hearts to a Future of Hope<br />
With the glorious resurrection and forgiveness of Easter upon us and with Pope Francis' exclamation of the meaning of God's Love in his <a href="http://globalnews.ca/news/441865/pope-francis-easter-speech/" target="_blank"><b>Easter speech</b></a> it seems a great time to throw out a challenge for the day (if not a lifetime). First let us soak up the Easter meaning in the words of Pope Francis:<br />
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What a joy it is for me to announce this message: Christ is risen! I would like it to go out to every house and every family, ...</div>
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Most of all, I would like it to enter every heart, for it is there that God wants to sow this Good News: Jesus is risen, there is hope for you, you are no longer in the power of sin, of evil! Love has triumphed, mercy has been victorious! The mercy of God always triumphs!</div>
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What does it mean that Jesus is risen? It means that the love of God is stronger than evil and death itself; it means that the love of God can transform our lives and let those desert places in our hearts bloom. The love God can do this!</div>
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This same love for which the Son of God became man and followed the way of humility and self-giving to the very end, down to hell – to the abyss of separation from God – this same merciful love has flooded with light the dead body of Jesus, has transfigured it, has made it pass into eternal life. Jesus did not return to his former life, to earthly life, but entered into the glorious life of God and he entered there with our humanity, opening us to a future of hope.</div>
What a great way of describing the Transformative effect of the Risen Lord and how His Forgiveness is the way of opportunities, the way of <b><i><span style="color: #073763;">"opening us to a future of hope." </span></i></b>The idea of this opportunity to re-imagine God's Love comes after watching <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Almighty-Widescreen-Edition-Steve-Carell/dp/B000UNYK4E/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1365257792&sr=1-2&keywords=Evan+Almighty" target="_blank">Evan Almighty</a>,</b> a warm & fuzzy modern day version of the story of the flood and Noah building the ARK.<br />
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So first let us get re-acclimated to the story - <b><span style="color: purple;"><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+6%3A9-9%3A17&version=NIV" target="_blank">Gen 6:9-9:17</a> </span></b> ...<br />
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Now <b><i><span style="color: #073763;">"opening us to a future of hope,"</span></i></b> watch the clip from the movie where Al Mighty masterfully creates a safe space within the heart of downcast Joan Baxter so she has an opportunity to wrestle with a different version of love.<br />
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Al says, "...lot of people didn't get the point of the story. They think it is about God's wrath and anger... They love it when God gets angry... "</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Joan asks, "Well, what is the story about, the ARK?"</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>Al Mighty responds, "... well, I think it is a love story, about believing in each other, ... everyone entered the ARK side-by-side." </b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><b>He then continues, "...sounds like an opportunity. Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, do you think that God gives them patience or does He give them the opportunity to be patient? If one prays for courage does God give them courage or the opportunity to be courageous? If someone prays for the family to be closer do you think God actually wants them to have warm fuzzy feelings or does He give them opportunities to love each other?" </b></span><br />
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Now let us ponder the opportunity: If the story of the ARK is NOT about God's wrath and anger but rather it is a love story then could it be that wherever we interpret God's wrath in scripture that we are actually projecting our own violence in place of, or to avoid, God's Love?<br />
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As I understand Pope Francis' Easter message as saying that we first need to allow a safe space to be created in our hearts to bloom so that our eyes may be opened so as to witness just who it is we are wrestling with. Instead of reading the flood story as representing God's wrath and anger; what if we read Gen 6:11-12: "<span class="text Gen-6-11" id="en-NIV-149" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Now the earth was corrupt<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-149G" title="See cross-reference G">G</a>)"></sup> in God’s sight and was full of violence,"<sup class="crossreference" style="font-size: 0.65em; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;" value="(<a href="#cen-NIV-149H" title="See cross-reference H">H</a>)"></sup></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span>... full of violence: the earth was flooded with <b>OUR</b> resentment, wrath & anger; <b>OUR</b> violence. ... Humm, so are we not like the disciples on the road to Emmaus as we reflect on Pope Francis' message? <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Gotham A', 'Gotham B', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 25.609375px;"><b>What does it mean that Jesus is risen? ... it means that the love of God can transform our lives and let those desert places in our hearts bloom!</b></span><br />
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<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+24%3A13-35&version=NIV" target="_blank"><b>The Emmaus Road Story</b></a> sheds the light of Easter on a way of reading the texts of the Old Testament - Jesus as Interpreter. What we get from the disciples' encounter along the road to Emmaus is that <i>the teaching of Christ is being passed from those who are being forgiven to those who are being forgiven.</i> God so loved us that He give us an opportunity to approach the flood narrative in Genesis (and all of Scripture) through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.<br />
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You know that just a few days ago on Good Friday, we have Jesus left alone yet still faithful to the God of life, not giving in to the flood of voices shouting, "Away with him! Away with him!" Are not these voices the desperate cries of those stuck in <b><i>the abyss of separation from God, </i></b>as Pope Francis referred to in his Easter message?<br />
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* Let us look deeper, isn't Jesus swept up in the flood of our violence? In fact, isn't he the victim of it? For three days, at least. But, no! The cross and tomb are really his ARK! Being sealed up in the tomb has really been his ARK of salvation. For in three days, Jesus emerges as the only one to truly survive the flood of violence. And this time God's act of salvation will be the one to finally change history - which is to say, Jesus' imitation of God's self-emptying Love, the empty tomb, <b><i>opens us to a future of hope</i></b>. This hope is not some 'me-and-Jesus' myth of pop-Christianity rather, Jesus Christ is risen to begin life, to begin creation, <b>AGAIN!</b> By this Gift of being forgiven, we are presented the opportunity to start anew. He does so as the One who can help us go beyond the floods of violence so we may reach the shore of forgiveness - a spaciousness in the heart, a place where there is no rivalry suggesting that the true purpose of forgiveness is the creation of a new WE - not just a new me, but a new us. Now THAT is an ARK of salvation.<br />
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Just as 'Al Mighty' called Evan Baxter (Noah) out of the rising tide of violence, so too with Jesus' help, we can survive the scandal and dictatorship of today's relativism that cause so many to be swept up into <b><i>the abyss of separation from God.</i></b> Increasingly, the scandal of relativism, like floods of violence, get people all worked up easily sweeping them into the abyss, but do not despair, there are the remnant who resist and stay faithful.<br />
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Going back to the opportunity laid out before us, pause and reflect on the rising conflict(s) in your own life - at home; at work; even now in our nation. Be aware how easy is it to get swept up with the chorus singing; Crucify him, crucify him.<br />
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At one point in the movie Evan was abandoned: just like Noah and just like Jesus, we too can expect that lonely feeling as we try to remain faithful when so many are caught up in the violence of our culture's relativism when God's Love is proclaimed.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfyaVNvFRpYj1hMrtsbp5EzJATTtcYdNbqsgjG13Wm_zfIAvcRUihJNtG-D487mgErEzn4lB5zzezRS4IQL10GHKInfr-Uf9bgfppgXMcf7x6kYDFqVKcbWTxdh_tQCErp7RtQwVshJs4/s1600/Heisrisen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfyaVNvFRpYj1hMrtsbp5EzJATTtcYdNbqsgjG13Wm_zfIAvcRUihJNtG-D487mgErEzn4lB5zzezRS4IQL10GHKInfr-Uf9bgfppgXMcf7x6kYDFqVKcbWTxdh_tQCErp7RtQwVshJs4/s320/Heisrisen.jpg" width="272" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Gotham A', 'Gotham B', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-style: italic; line-height: 25.609375px;">This same love for which the Son of God became man and followed the way of humility and self-giving to the very end, down to hell – to the abyss of separation from God – this same merciful love has flooded with light the dead body of Jesus, has transfigured it, has made it pass into eternal life. Jesus did not return to his former life, to earthly life, but entered into the glorious life of God and he entered there with our humanity, opening us to a future of hope.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #ffffcc; font-size: x-small;">* See Pastor Paul J. Nuechterlein</span><span style="background-color: #ffffcc; font-size: x-small;"> and his sermon on <a href="http://girardianlectionary.net/year_a/advent1a_2001_ser.htm" target="_blank">Surviving the Floods of Violence</a>.</span></div>
David Nybakkehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13172189118334371454noreply@blogger.com0