Rev. William Sloan Coffin on NPR, 1985.

April 14th, 2006 NPR Broadcast.
Who died in 2006 at 81.
Chaplain of Yale during conflict of 60's.

Terry Gross on Fresh Air in 1985 interviews Coffin.

I like this point:

"As Saint Augustine once said, 'Love God and do what you like.' Which is not license, but freedom. Rules and regulations are like the stick that hold up the tomato vine. Without the stick the vine couldn't get off the ground, but it's a combination of sun and soil that strengthens and nourishes the tomato vine - and there is no life coming out of that stick. And I think it is the same with rules and regulations. They are penultimate, they are not ultimate, the point beyond themselves, don't look at us, use us to get beyond ourselves and that the integrity of love is much more important than the purity of dogma.
So, to me a true believe is one whose heart is overflowing with compassion and love for others, and who feels that rules and regulations are important, but not ultimately important."

- Rev. William Sloan Coffin.

youth gathering in Montana - ecumenical gathering in Africa

I just spent the weekend with my Youth Group in Lewistown, MT. A great time.

I want to key in on our final speaker Jessica Crist, the Bishop of the Montana ELCA synod. In particular her recent voyage to Africa.

She attended the Global Christian Forum, at Limuru, near Nairobi. This is said to be the most diverse gathering of Christian faith groups since NEVER.

Jessica got home on Saturday and then hustled to Lewistown to speak to the state wide gathering of Montana ELCA Lutheran youth.

She explained that at the African gathering there were 70 countries represented.

I'll input that it is crucial to have more world and local gatherings that are in communication with one another.

Below are a few quotes that I took from articles on this site...
http://www.oikoumene.org/en/events-sections/global-christian-forum.html


Global Christian Forum taking place on 6-9 November in Limuru, near Nairobi, Kenya.

The Christian traditions represented at the Global Christian Forum are: African Instituted, Anglican, Baptist, Evangelical, Disciples (Churches of Christ), Friends, Holiness, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Moravian, Old Catholic, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Pentecostal, Reformed, Roman Catholic, Salvation Army, Seventh-day Adventist, United and Uniting Churches.

1.
Dr. Wonsuk Ma, a Pentecostal missiologist and director of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.
In a keynote address delivered on the second day of the forum, Ma analyzed Christian developments in unity and mission over the last century. He affirmed that in Christian mission, the seemingly contradictory emphases on "life before death" and on "life after death" - which have separated "mainline" and "evangelical" Christians for decades - are actually complementary and in need of each other.

2.
Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, addressing a 6-9 November meeting of the forum near Nairobi.

The WCC has said the Kenya forum has brought together the broadest range of Christian traditions ever gathered at a global meeting.

"The experience of all of us in these days, is that we have been able to talk to each other in honesty," said Farrell. "If we can know each other better, then we can deal with our questions."

He said, "We believe this table brings greater understanding and breaks stereotypes."
-Rev. Geoff Tunnicliffe, international director of the World Evangelical Alliance

3.
Bridges-Johns, a professor at the Theological Seminary of the Church of God in Cleveland (Tennessee)

"any new form of ecumenism must take into account the new faces, the different worldviews and new voices of non-Western Christianity". But the so-called "new ecumenism" fails to understand the reality of the "indigenous, multi-faceted forms of Christianity" outside the Western context. "Western conservatives look to the South for support, but fail to understand the worldview of Southern Christianity."

Ahhh, said well...

"Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise."
--Annie Dillard

Bill McKibben's "The Comforting Whilwind".

A great commentary on the Old Testament story of Job.

Here is a piece, more to come.

(humility is the first response of Job as God reveals himself in the whirlwind...)

"The voice also calls us, overwhelmingly to joy. To immersion in the fantastic beauty and drama all around us. It does not call us to think, to categorize, to analyze, to evaluate. It calls us to be. The reason Job matters so much to me is because of the language - the biologically accurate, earthy, juicy, crusty, WILD, untamed poetry of God's great speech. Now, commentators - mostly urban commentators, I would wager - have insisted over the centuries that God's answer is obscure; I read recently an interview with a leading rock hard fundamentalist who believed every word in the Bible, but said that he thought the language in Job was probably "poetic." Many others have said that simply the presence of God alone is answer enough for Job. But that is absurd, if only because of the incredible strength that the artist lavishes on his words. We are to listen to God with that part of us that is most open to the POWER OF ART. Not just our ears - more than anything, the images are visual, sensual, a total contrast to the gnat-straining and wool-gathering and other academic exercises that have occupied the previous thirty chapters. Gd doesn't even deign to dismiss all that talk as vain. No - he simply embarks on a defiantly proud tour of the physical world, a world filled with untamed glory tat reflects his own...""

JOB'S CREATION CHAPTERS ARE WHERE THIS POETIC GOD SPEECH LIES - CHECK IT OUT: STARTS IN CHAPTER 38 OF JOB - especially great in Eugene Peterson's translation "The Message".

He goes on quoting some of the text and says,

"Not only are all these things mighty and inexplicable and painful, but they are unbearably beautiful to God. They are right. They should brew in us a fierce and intoxicating joy."

"WILDERNESS IS OUR TRUE HOME" - someone said that... Henry Bugbee? Eckhart? DJDuncan?...

Bill M. also says,
"This kind of untamed joy, of rapture, is not confined to our dealings with the natural world, of course. Friendship, love, sex - all are openings into this irrational and deeply moving world. None move solely according to the calculations we are taught by the economists and advertisers; all produce joy far deeper than any material acquisition."

I LOVE THIS.
JOB, REMEMBER IS BEING INTRODUCED TO THIS AWE-FILLED EXPLORATION OF THE WONDER-WILDERNESS OF CREATION FROM A PLACE OF DESTITUTE SUFFERING AND LOSS - JOB AND HIS PAIN ARE SIMPLY A PART OF THIS WILDERNESS OF LIFE...AND OF DEATH.
*AND SOMEHOW THIS MAKES GOD'S "LOVE" THAT WE HEAR ABOUT ALL THE TIME ALL THE MORE MAGNIFICENT...

EVERYONE CONVINCED?...

Youth Group Blog

i made a blog for my youth group - check it out -
Do you all know any funny youtube videos that i could put up?
The one I have on are of the serious category.

http://gfallsyouth.wordpress.com/

Christianity is not about saving souls!! Christianity is not about confessing that "Jesus is Lord" in order to escape to heaven upon death!!

SALVATION AND JUSTICE ARE NOW...

A few words from Marcus Borg:

Why not emphasize the afterlife as the best reason for becoming a Christian?

When the afterlife is emphasized as the primary reason [for being a Christian], it inevitably turns Christianity into a religion of requirements and rewards: [With this type of thinking] if there is an afterlife, it doesn't seem fair to most people that everybody gets to go there regardless. One must have to do or believe something [in order to experience life after death]. Suddenly we're focusing on requirements and rewards.

Secondly, when the afterlife is emphasized, it tends to divide the world into those who are saved and those who are not. An emphasis on the afterlife also directs our attention to the other world or the next world rather than to transformation within this world. I see transformation within this world to be the primary meaning of the Christian gospel. An invitation to relationship with God is what begins to transform our lives in the here and now, and as that relationship deepens, it also leads us to become concerned about the transformation of society and the world itself.

I see Christianity, and its roots in Judaism and the Hebrew Bible, as very much a this-worldly religion. There's no denial of an afterlife in my saying that. But it's a way of saying that we leave the afterlife up to God. Our task is the transformation of ourselves and of the world this side of death.
--Dr. Marcus Borg
______________________________________________

Wallace: What motivated you to write Reading the Bible Again for the First Time?
Borg: Conflict over the Bible is the single most divisive issue in the church in North America today....

Wallace: Share your views on the "lenses through which people read the Bible."
Borg: There is a "lens of literalism" where the Bible is seen as a divine product that came directly from God and therefore has a divine guarantee. Instead, read the Bible as a collection of ancient documents chronicling the experience of the people of its time, and as a metaphor with a more than factual meaning....

--Dr. Marcus Borg interview.

Pictures

Below are a bunch of photos representing recent history. I haven't written for quite a while - lots has happened.

We finished harvest, fall has begun - my garden did pretty well - i think one picture is of melons and squash - the old stocks of corn are surrounding them - look down my blog to find the corn earlier in the season and much greener!
I was hired to get a youth group going in Great Falls, MT at a Lutheran ELCA chruch called "Our Saviours Lutheran Church" - I have found that I'm having as much or more fun than the kids - there are some pictures of our first meeting. Also played music at a wedding. My dear friend Gillian, who I attended preschool with got married in Glacier park. And lots of other pics (bucko, my horse had a leg injury down on the wrestling mat, i've been hanging out with the self portrait-ed girl-face (...what?), lots lots of random youth group pictures, a little 2 tone pepper raised in our garden, my dear father's might, mom with two horses and their 8 now healthy legs, - more to come












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